How to Add Quick Props Feature to Your Blog

I happen to be one of those people who like the [this is good] feature on Vox. As mentioned in the Team Vox blog when the feature was released, it was meant to add “the ability to tell someone you like something of theirs, without the pressure of having to write a comment or think of something clever to say.” Since only a few of you care enough to leave a comment every now and then, I thought I’d add a similar feature to this blog. If you like any entry I posted but don’t really feel like writing a comment, just tick the checkbox. The word “Fabulous!” will show up in the comment box that you can submit to let me know that you enjoyed the post. Of course you can append more text to it. The longer the comments, the happier I’ll be, but even a nice, one-word comment is better than no comments at all. Hence the added feature.

If you’d like to incorporate this quick props feature into your blog, this is the javascript I’m using (if your blog is powered by Movable Type, you can just copy and paste the following code into your mt-site.js):

function thisisgood() {
var props = document.getElementById('props');
var text = document.getElementById('text');
if (props.checked==true) {
text.value=props.value;}
else {text.value="";}
}

And this is the HTML for the checkbox to incorporate into your comment form:

<input type="checkbox" id="props" name="props" value="Fabulous!" onclick="thisisgood()" /> Fabulous!

This code will only work if your checkbox id is called “props” and the textarea id is “text”. Otherwise, you’ll have to modify it accordingly. Should be a piece of cake, even if you’re not too familiar with javascripts.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share. Hope you find this useful!