Try Google Desktop 5.5 Beta!

Friday, October 05, 2007 at 11:47 AM



You might have already noticed a post in our sister blog describing the new Google Desktop 5.5 Beta. That post covered the most visible new features, such as Desktop gadgets working on iGoogle and the improved Quick Search Box. We'll just talk about what the new version means for developers.

First, we'd like you to try out the features that Desktop gadgets get for free in this release:
  • Desktop gadgets are already included in the iGoogle gadget directory. Try this: Go to your iGoogle homepage, click Add stuff, search for a published gadget (for example, "Media Player"), and add it to your homepage.

  • It's easy to run multiple instances of a single gadget. Try this: Select "Add gadgets" (+ on the top sidebar menu), search for a gadget you're already running, and then add the gadget again. In previous releases, you wouldn't find gadgets you were already running; now multiple instances just work
Here are some of the new features that you can add to your gadgets:
And lots more. You can find all the details in the release notes for Google Desktop 5.5.

So go ahead: download Google Desktop 5.5, play with it, and try out the new APIs. Then please let us know what you think, both as a user and as a developer. Thanks for your support!

4 comments:

Jimmy B. said...

I'm getting the following error message when trying to install GoogleDesktop: "Installing GoogleDesktop under different credentials than the active user is currently not supported." Does anyone have a solution for this or can anyone tell me why I'm getting this message? I installed one of the first versions of GoogleDesktop when it first came out and I don't have a sidebar with gadget capability. How do I upgrade? Thanks for your help!

Anonymous said...

Hey Jimmy b,
This is the developer blog. If you want some advice, I recommend you try posting over at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop where we have a whole community of users that can help you troubleshoot. Alternatively, there's the Help Center: http://desktop.google.com/support that has many suggestions for install problems as well.

That said, if you're using an older build of Desktop and can't upgrade, make sure you're not logged into any other user accounts on your machine, and that you're currently logged into an account with admin rights. Next, uninstall the existing version, reboot, and you should now be able to install the latest version. Any further trouble, come visit us at the group listed above!
-Ben

Anonymous said...

A few question... Can i run an igoogle gadget within the google desktop. or is it just gadgets written for google desktop can now be run in igoogle (not bi-directional?).

Also, i don't see anywhere in the google desktop api the ability to embed flash content, although this is available in the google web gadget api.

thanks for your help.

James [GD Team] said...

Hi Jeremy,

For these types of questions, please visit our developer forum http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop

Yes they can be run in Desktop and quite a few are in the gallery/directory.

If you need to prototype or test an igoogle gadget, refer to this FAQ:

http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57578&topic=10377