Skip to main content

Make Your Own Marketing Widgets!

By
How LAB-AIDS is using the new widgets.
Tizra now offers a Widget viewing mode that lets you embed your content in just about any standard web page just by inserting a little blob of HTML code.  It's great for letting users "leaf through" samples of your content without interrupting what they're doing...whether that's perusing your online book catalog, reading a review, or as you'll see below, enjoying a fascinating blog post like this!  It enables you to disseminate promotional samples widely via viral or conventional marketing campaigns, and to make the online shopping and buying experience as seamless and integrated as possible.

For example, say you were a well-known Tizra customer like LAB-AIDS. You could give bloggers a simple snippet of code that would let them show their readers a thumbnail-sized sample of one of your beautiful books like this...


All that's needed to embed the above sample is a little blob of code like this...
<iframe src="http://s75327680-sample.tizrapublisher.com/3lv4ul/82?zoomFactor=0.255" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid black; height: 326px; overflow: hidden; width: 240px;"></iframe>
The web monkeys among you will immediately recognize it as plain old HTML that'll work just about anywhere.  This means it's easy for anyone with minimal web skills to spread the word about your content.

It also means web designers can customize the widgets without learning anything new.  With a few tweaks, samples can be made bigger, smaller, given decorative borders, or otherwise tailored to fit their surroundings.  Say you wanted to distribute a bigger sample, like this from Goodheart-Willcox, and frame it in orange...



Cooking Up Your Own Widgets

To create one of these blobs of code, you start with a pair of standard iframe tags, like this...
<iframe></iframe>
To indicate which content you want included in the sample, you use a special version of the Tizra URL for that content (to open up access to the content, you'll need admin privileges on a Tizra account and knowledge of the basic access control tools).  The URL is similar to the ones used to preview content in the private staging area of a Tizra site, but with a slight twist.  If the staging variant looked like this...
http://s45273646-preview.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3
...the version to use in your widget would look like this...
http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3
...with the only difference being that "sample" is used in place of "preview."

Once you have the URL, you stick it into the iframe markup like this...
<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3"></iframe>
From here, it's all about tweaking the cosmetics.  First you'll probably want to set the size of the iframe (essentially the window inside which your content will be displayed).  You can do that through standard HTML.  For example, you'd set it to 240 pixels wide by 326 pixels wide like this...
<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3" style="width: 240px; height: 326px;"></iframe>
You can change the size of the page images that appear inside the iframe by adding a zoom factor to the end of the URL like this...

<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3?zoomFactor=0.255" style="width: 240px; height: 326px;"></iframe>
Increment the number up for bigger, down for smaller.  

Then you can decorate to your heart's content, say by adding a white background to bleed out to the edge of the iframe, and a nice crisp black border...

<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3?zoomFactor=0.255" style="width: 240px; height: 326px; background-color: white; border: 1px solid black;"></iframe>


Comments

David McKnight said…
This is excellent. Great for content marketing, promoting events, a new publication, just about any content. With Tizra controlling access you can event share "member only" content without worrying about if the the promo gets shared...matter of fact...you would want it to so more learn about the great content you have and the value of membership.
9/10/2012 11:06 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Online Publishing for Tough Times

By
"I didn't invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella" Almost Famous In an economic climate that led Publishers Weekly to predict 2009 would be "the worst year for publishing in decades," eBook sales are growing at more than 100% a year, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). We think it's time more content owners—both inside and outside the traditional publishing industry—had access to serious online publishing tools that will open up this kind of opportunity. That's why we're rolling out free, self-service signups to Tizra Publisher. This is the same software that MIT Press is using to sell a collection of more than 170 computer science books on its CISnet site , and you can get your hands on it right now… FREE 60 SECOND SIGNUP If you'd like to learn a bit more, here's quick overview of what Tizra Publisher can do ( click the little TV icon at the bottom to see it big! ).
1 comment
Read more

Technical Podcasts

By Francisco Assis Rosa
If there is something the web as surely changed, it was the way that software engineers need to work. It is now a crucial aspect of our work to be able draw from the huge internet knowledge base out there in an efficient way to get to the right answers. Part of that information extraction is related to the keeping-up-to-date effort that every developer is required to accomplish to continue to be productive. While previous a software engineer could rely mostly on print material, nowadays we need to rely as well on content available on the net. Podcasts are such a source that can bring an amazing amount of information to the mix of knowledge one needs these days. If you are a software engineer and have not jumped into the podcast wagon yet, I suggest you do so. Here is a list some technical podcasts that we hear at Tizra: The Java Posse : a fantastic podcast on Java development. Containing news info update, analysis of tools, overall software development discussions. Software as She Dev...
2 comments
Read more

Why Books in Browsers? A Closer Look at e-book Publishing Software Choices

By
What’s an ebook?   For many, the first thought is of a Kindle, Nook or similar device, designed for a single purpose and packed with texts downloaded from a single retailer.  However, it’s easy to forget just how new that notion of ebook publishing software is...or how quickly it’s changing. Vintage Rocket eBook (left) and SoftBook devices show how quickly the basic definition of an ebook can change.  (From the collection of Tizra founder David Durand.) As broadband connections and computing power become more pervasive, the idea of “books in browsers” or “books in the cloud” is gaining traction.  As has already happened in other media with services like Hulu, Netflix and Spotify, book publishers are starting to see the value in streaming content direct to users as they need it, rather than requiring them to download it to their own device before use. The Case for Books in Browsers: Delivering books or content in browsers is ideal for publishers that wan...
Post a Comment
Read more