Desktop APIs

Thursday, May 07, 2009 at 3:48 PM

What makes a quality gadget?

• Platform specification: If you create a gadget only for Windows, make sure that the gadget is not installable on Mac or Linux:
  

  <windows minimumGadgetHostVersion="5.1.0.0"/>  <!-- Windows is supported -->
  <mac supported="no"/>                          <!-- No support for Mac -->

  For more information, check the gadget.gmanifest documentation.


• Good performance: The gadget should make optimum use of the hardware and operating system services. The efficiency of software can usually be greatly improved by an intelligent choice of high-level algorithms, rather than using local "tricks" or optimizations that can lead to maintenance problems. Factors that may be of interest are response time and memory requirements.
  
  
• Robustness: The gadget should continue to function in non-standard conditions such as incorrect user input. For example, when the user types something wrong, you can warn the user with a basic message box.
  
  
• Appropriate interface: The gadget should be friendly and inviting to users. The design and choice of the interface should take into account the needs and capabilities of the users. Many times, gadget features are not utilized because the interface is difficult.
  
  
• Documentation: The gadget must link to a website that provides support and information about the gadget. On the website, you can write detailed descriptions about what the gadget can do. And don’t forget to display your email address so the users can easily provide feedback about your gadget, offer to translate it, or report a bug. Try to always include a page with frequently asked questions. One good idea is to add a YouTube video about your gadget on the website to show what it can do.
  

Posted by Stefan Van Damme, Gadget Developer

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 12:08 PM

A new gadget by Adam Hotz is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Task List and Timer.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Monday, April 20, 2009 at 1:38 PM

Yet another gadget by Rosie Ojo is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Periodic Table Interactive.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Monday, April 13, 2009 at 7:38 AM

A gadget by Teodor Filimon is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Tabbed Todo List.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Monday, April 06, 2009 at 9:28 PM

A new gadget by Prithvi Prabhu is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Resource Hog Tracker.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Friday, March 13, 2009 at 9:35 AM

What information must be in a gadget's About dialog? The About dialog certainly needs to display the gadget name. It should also contain:

• The gadget creator's name (your name or your company's name)
  
• A short description of what the gadget can do
  
• The gadget's license, if any (for example, CC-License or Apache License)
  

Optionally, you can add information such as:

• The version number of the gadget
  
• A list of features introduced in this version of the gadget
• A link to your website, so happy customers can get more gadgets from you or contact you

Here's an example of a good About dialog in my Fast shutdown gadget.

Monday, February 23, 2009 at 9:48 AM

When writing code in the Google Desktop Gadget Designer, you most likely have used the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste text.

Here are some other shortcuts to work faster in the Gadget Designer. They work only while editing text such as JavaScript and XML files.

Ctrl+D	Inserts a copy of the current line below the current line
Ctrl+L	Deletes the current line
Ctrl+T	Swaps the current line and the line above it
Ctrl+[0-9]	Switches the current tab. For example, if the Preview window is positioned in the second tab, Ctrl+2 switches to that tab.

Posted by Stefan Van Damme, Gadget Developer

Monday, February 09, 2009 at 3:05 PM

Google Desktop has active ambassadors all over the world who have successfully held programming contests and seminars at their schools.

As a stepping stone for bigger events, we held IIT Google Desktop Developer Challenge II at Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT), Sri Lanka, last summer.

This is the second event we organized at IIT Sri Lanka; you can read about the first event.

IIT Google Desktop Developer Challenge II was a Google Desktop Gadget contest organized for student developers at our institute. Any student enrolled at IIT was eligible to take part, and the main purpose of the contest was to inspire new developers to try the Google Desktop APIs and develop gadgets.

First, the students who wished to participate in this contest had to hand in proposals, which contained a brief introduction to the gadget they planned to develop. After that, it was time for them to develop their gadgets. The completed gadgets were forwarded to a panel of experts including API Gurus and the Google Desktop team. All these steps were done online through the official website for the contest, powered by Google App Engine.

And now, we are very happy to announce the winners of the second successful ambassador event in Sri Lanka.

Nadeeshani Jayathilaka was selected as third runner up for the gadget Greeting Bird, while Shazin was selected as the second runner up the gadget Radio Pro. The first runner up was Hanitha Gnanathesigar for her gadget GHealth N Fitness.

The winner of the contest was Lakmal Jayathilaka, who created the gadget Text 2 Wav Converter.



We congratulate all the winners and would like to thank everyone who took part in this competition and who helped to make this event a success. You can view photos of the award ceremony on Picasa Web Albums. Last but not least, a special thanks to the Google Desktop team for the greatest support given.

Posted by Lahiru Lakmal Priyadarshana, Google Desktop Ambassador and Gadget Developer

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.

Posted by Teodor "Teo" Filimon, Gadget Developer

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.

Posted by Bijoy Thangaraj R, Gadget Developer & API Guru

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.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

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.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

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.

Mihai Ionescu, Software Engineer (Google Desktop Team)

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!

Posted by James Yum, Developer Programs Engineer (Google Desktop Team)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 2:28 PM

Another new gadget by Andreas Horlacher is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Radio Energy Zürich.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Friday, October 24, 2008 at 3:31 PM

"Vox populi" is a Latin phrase that means "the voice of the people" or, in our case, the voice of the users. A good way to tap into this great source of feedback and to get a gratifying feeling, as well, is to compile accurate statistics about how many people install your gadgets and how long people keep your gadgets.

My latest article, Gadget Usage Stats, details a possible implementation of such a system, keeping user privacy in mind. It isn't too complicated; you can reduce it to 3 levels: the gadget, a server-side script, and a database. The interesting part is how all the elements communicate with each other. After reading this article, you should be able to set up this system for your own gadgets. You can take advantage of the system's flexibility by changing it to meet your own needs.

Posted by Teodor Filimon, Gadget Developer

Monday, October 20, 2008 at 9:08 AM

A new gadget by Rosie Ojo is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Precious Metals Spot Prices.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Monday, October 13, 2008 at 12:38 PM

A new gadget by Mehdy Bohlool is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Persian Calendar.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 at 11:58 PM

Did you know that on Windows you can extract a file that's packaged within your Desktop gadget? The following code extracts a file (called sample.xml in this example) to the temporary folder.

  var tempFile = gadget.storage.extract("sample.xml"); // extract the file
  debug.trace(tempFile);  // tempFile contains the path of the file

All temporary files created by gadget.storage.extract are cleaned up automatically when the gadget is closed.

Note: Only on Windows do Desktop gadgets have access to the file system.

Posted by Stefan Van Damme, Gadget Developer

Tuesday, October 07, 2008 at 2:22 PM

A new gadget by Andreas Horlacher is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Communicator.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)