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Google Adds Widgets to Homepage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-the-clever-stuff dept.

Panaphonix writes "Google announced that their personalized homepage now has an API for developers to add their own modules. Samples are available in this directory."

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. You have to give Google some props.... by 8127972 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..... for how easy creating these apps happens to be. If I were still teaching, I would likely use this as a means to teach basic programming skills. They also have something else going for them excellent documentation that is easily understood by my wife who is a non geek. To top it all off, it's using HTML, XML, and Javascript. Three open and accessible languages that are widely used on a variety of platforms.

    Methinks that one of the reasons behind this is that they want to "embrace and extend." Sound familiar?

    --
    This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
  2. Good, finally by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe now I can add some of the mor euseful widgets at My Yahoo! to the Google homepage... lik a stock ticker that does more than just US exchange, or a TV listings mondule for more than just US listings.

    My Yahoo! has been way ahead of Google on this for some time, hopefully this will allow Google to catch up quicker by leveraging third-party developers.

  3. my experience by adpowers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been up all night writing a widget. Let me tell you this: the development environment is a pain in the arse. Using their developer widget, it gives you the option of not caching the various widgets. I tried using this tool to not cache mine (so I could reload easily and see changes to the code), but it didn't work reliably. Whenever you moved the widget around to a different spot, it would go to a new revision of the code... and it was almost never the latest revision. This was so frustrating. What I ended up doing was renaming my widget every revision (also a huge pain in the arse). I ended up renaming it over 40 times during the course of the night. Then you have to add the widget back to your personalized home and go through all the steps again. Blast. I'm not bitter :).

    If you want to see the culmination of my night's work, plug this into the widget manager: http://andrewhitchcock.org/musicmobs/w.xml

    My widget pulls data from musicmobs. You can look at similar artists or find interesting playlists. If you visit that page, you can upload your iTunes library to make the recommendations more accurate, and it gives you the ability to upload your own playlists (which then become visible in the widget). Check it out!

    Andrew

  4. Imageshack Hosting Widget by Grimmthething · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I created a quick imageshack hosting widget. To give it a try add this link to the "Create a Section" spot. It is a really simple one, but for me is very useful. Imageshack hosting widget http://base.google.com/base/a/16800097909005850654