Pajamas Media: Tech Lair: widgets

Presidential Straw Poll 2008

This is a rolling poll in which each person is able to vote for one candidate in each party once a week. This far away from the election people will undoubtedly change their minds about the candidates as events go forward. Our intention is to track those changes with the growing online electorate.

We encourage people to vote for one candidate in each party. We realize that some people find the opposite side of the aisle anathema, but consider it an experiment in democracy. And they should come back the following week to vote again.

Register Your Site as a Precinct! We are making simple code available to embed the Presidential Straw Poll on your site with a widget. This will make your site a form of online poll precinct. There is of course a method of showing how participants from each precinct are voting.

The widget is designed to adapt to wherever you position it on your site. See our demo page — where you can move the voting affordance to various parts of a page.

A Note on Widget Installation:
Since the Straw Poll 2008 widget is written in javascript, make sure you are able to add javascript code to your website. Some content management systems (CMS) and template-based web hosting services like myspace.com and wordpress.com restrict you from adding javascript code to your site. Contact your web hosting company or the product’s technical support line to check if they have this restriction.


widgets Interactive gadget, helping blogs attract readers and spark thoughtful conversations.	Presidential Straw Poll 2008 This is a rolling poll in which each person is able to vote for one candidate in each party once a week. This far away from the election people will undoubtedly change their minds about the candidates as events go forward. Our intention is to track those changes with the growing online electorate. We encourage people to vote for one candidate in each party. We realize that some people find the opposite side of the aisle anathema, but consider it an experiment in democracy. And they should come back the following week to vote again. Register Your Site as a Precinct! We are making simple code available to embed the Presidential Straw Poll on your site with a widget. This will make your site a form of online poll precinct. There is of course a method of showing how participants from each precinct are voting. The widget is designed to adapt to wherever you position it on your site. See our demo page — where you can move the voting affordance to various parts of a page. A Note on Widget Installation: Since the Straw Poll 2008 widget is written in javascript, make sure you are able to add javascript code to your website. Some content management systems (CMS) and template-based web hosting services like myspace.com and wordpress.com restrict you from adding javascript code to your site. Contact your web hosting company or the product’s technical support line to check if they have this restriction. Future widgets We may release other widgets in the future, helping blogs attract readers and spark thoughtful conversations. Let us know if you have ideas that connect to Pajamas Media. Comments (0)