Desktop APIs
Your official source on the Google Desktop APIs
Aiming for a better user experience
Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 1:40 PM
Although Google Desktop gadgets are getting easier and easier to develop, you still might want to spend time on improving the overall experience of using your gadget. There are a lot of features you may want to consider, and many resources exist to help you implement these features.For example, my latest article about Improving User Experience deals with following useful standards in your gadget. It describes ways to achieve attractive and intuitive interfaces, gather user feedback, and implement an update system. It also touches on related topics such as attracting users and planning for updates. The article has links to other articles and API references, where you can find further details.
Report: Gadget Development Workshop at Vellore Institute of Technology
Wednesday, December 03, 2008 at 9:31 AM
It was my immense pleasure to conduct this Desktop gadget development workshop at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) on 22 Oct as part of Phreak 08. Phreak is a National Level Technical Symposium organized by VIT every year to discuss, share, and learn about the latest and future technologies. The time allotted for this workshop was 3 hours, including a 15-minute break.It started off with a 45-minute technical presentation similar to what was presented at Google Developer Day. I covered the basic introduction, structure, and benefits of Google Desktop gadgets. This also included a demo of the Designer and an explanation of developer resources. I showed the Gadget API Reference page, and from that we used a few API methods to quickly create the Memory Smiley gadget.
The second part of the session was a fun-filled one. I started with the basics of XML and JavaScript, as most of the students were in their first year and were new to these. After that, I opened the Designer and added some images and a single button. Then students were challenged to come up with ideas on how to develop a gadget out of it. We received more than 35 ideas. Some had real potential, and others were just funny.
A few of the ideas: a dictionary with language converter, a gadget to automatically download videos as you watch them on YouTube/Orkut, phone dialers, file restorer, and a shortcut to clear history. Some of the ideas that came up — such as a to-do list, a weather gadget, and a program runner — already existed in the gallery. We had a few Google T-shirts and gave them away to people that suggested the best ideas.
After the brainstorming session, we took two of the ideas and implemented them on the spot. One was Thought for the Click; the other was a Simple Music Player. I've posted the slides and the code from the workshop in my blog.
I would like to thank the ambassadors, Vishnu S and Ajay Amritraj, who made this all possible. They did all they could to book the hall and get people registered. It was an opportunity for me to showcase my passion for sharing technology. It was a great experience, and I would love to conduct more of these kind of workshops in the future.
If you'd like to see more photos, here's the complete set of pictures.
Congratulations to Edwin Lee!
Friday, November 21, 2008 at 11:38 AM
A new gadget by Edwin Lee is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: On-Screen Ruler.Google Developer Day contest results
Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Thanks to everyone who attended the Developer Day India codelab sessions and participated in the gadget contest. We've completed the judging and have awarded prizes. Here are the final results:1st place
Resource Hog Tracker by Prithvi Prabhu
3rd place (tie)
As far as I know, all of these gadgets were created by newcomers to the Desktop Gadget APIs. The entire Google Developer Day team was continually impressed by the skill level of the attendees, and these gadgets prove that point.
Many thanks to all the participants, and we hope to see you all next year!
Congratulations to Stefan Van Damme!
Friday, November 14, 2008 at 9:42 AM
A new gadget by Stefan Van Damme (aka Stefan vd) is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: VM Wheater Map.Submit your winter holiday gadgets
Monday, November 10, 2008 at 3:18 PM
It is again that time of the year when we ask the developer community to unleash their creativity and submit holiday-themed gadgets.In the past we've featured gadgets for a long list of holidays such as Valentine's Day, Halloween, New Year, Christmas, and Hanukkah; these gadgets were a great success. Many thanks to the developers who submitted them!
We would like to repeat this feat with the upcoming winter holidays and New Year 2009. If you have plans to develop a gadget, please let us know. We'll feature holiday gadgets and blog about them.
Please submit your gadgets by December 3, 2008. We're looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Any questions? You can send them to gd-developer AT google DOT com.
New Hall of Fame leader: Alexey Polkovnikov
Thursday, November 06, 2008 at 8:02 AM
We would like congratulate Alexey Polkovnikov, who has grabbed the top spot in the Developer Hall of Fame. The Google Desktop team thanks Alexey for creating so many popular, useful gadgets!Tip: Automatically update gadget screenshots
Monday, November 03, 2008 at 11:47 AM
When you submit your gadget, you specify URLs for large and small screenshots of the gadget. These screenshots represent your gadget in listings such as the Add gadgets window, online gadget directories, and the web page that's automatically generated for each gadget.Unfortunately, there was no direct way to update these locations should they ever change — until now. This tip tells you how to update the screenshot URLs.
Add these tags to the gadget.gmanifest of your published .gg file:
<about>The gadget gallery has the smarts to pick up these changes and use the URLs you specify to update the images in the gallery. Check out the gadget.gmanifest documentation for more details.
...
<thumbnailUrl>http://mysite.appspot.com/80x60_screen.png</thumbnailUrl>
<screenshotUrl >http://mysite.appspot.com/300x255_screen.png</screenshotUrl>
...
</about>
Just a reminder, the small screenshot should be 80x60 pixels. Also, be sure to take a look at this classic tip about submitting better screenshots.
