Developer survey results

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 11:03 AM


Recently, we ran a survey soliciting feedback from every developer who has ever submitted a gadget for Google Desktop. I'd like to highlight five areas where your feedback particularly resonated.

  • Gadget Designer: Many of you have used the designer, with mixed results. You think the idea is great, but "the designer needs to be beefed up a bit." We agree. The designer needs to help developers easily build functional, good-looking gadgets. As I type, the designer is being improved. Keep watching here; we'll announce improvements soon.
  • Documentation and Samples: The current documentation and samples are used extensively, with one developer commenting, "Samples were great. I think you need more of them...that's the best way I learn." You also asked that we provide more samples and documentation, as some of the things you want to do are not very well documented. We hear you, and are building more samples and writing more docs. Check out our knowledge base, which is growing quickly thanks to your help.
  • Gadget Submission Process: You want to see improvements to the process of submitting gadgets to Google. One of you summarized what's needed: the process should "be faster and better organized." We agree, and you should know that we are making the process faster in the short term and working towards a much better system in the long term.
  • Advanced APIs: Too few of you know about advanced APIs such as the Google Talk API, Query API, and Event API. Our documentation of these APIs is incomplete: the links for the query and event APIs don't even discuss gadget-specific usage of the API. We think these APIs provide a lot of potential for making compelling, unique gadgets, so we'll be writing more about the APIs and will create samples.
  • Recognition: One of you made a wonderful comment: "I am not the type of developer that needs reward or recognition. The usability and popularity of my gadget speaks for itself." But we do like recognizing good work, and many of you seem to appreciate that, and want to know more about our developer programs. We're looking into ways to provide developers with more opportunities and incentives to develop high-quality, useful desktop gadgets.

If you have more comments, please share them! If you would prefer not to comment publicly, email us at gd-developer AT google DOT com.

3 comments:

Teo said...

This is great! I agree about the need for Event and Query APIs samples/examples.

Yannick said...

eah, and I've never understood what Action API is

Bijoy Thangaraj said...

Along with the APIs, if there is a list of possible and potential ideas also published, it would be very good. Many don't really realize the capability of these APIs.