A completely new Gadget Designer

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 11:38 AM

A new and improved Google Desktop Gadget Designer is out, with a couple of major new features. The Designer editor now includes autocompletion support and function call tips for the Google Desktop Gadget API and the JavaScript language.

You can start autocompletion by typing the "." key or pressing Ctrl+Space. A list appears that displays objects, methods, properties, events, and constants to choose from, along with visual indicators to help you distinguish between them. Non-object related variables and functions are also dynamically recognized as you type them, and you'll see autocompletion suggestions based on your current scope. The following screenshot shows how Designer displays autocompletion suggestions for view object properties and methods that start with "s".



Call tips display function prototypes and short descriptions. They appear when you type an opening brace "(" or press Shift+Space. The following screenshot shows the call tip for the view.setInterval() method.



We sincerely hope that these new features will save you a lot of time while developing gadgets, making it that much more fun to bring your ideas to life. Please download the latest SDK and try out the new Gadget Designer.

Posted by Paneendra Ba, Software Engineer (Google Desktop Team)

SDK update

Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:47 PM

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

We've just released a minor update to the Google Desktop SDK. The most noticeable change is that we've updated the stock images for controls, both in the Designer and in sample gadgets.



The old images are still lying around, in case you miss them. You can find them in the archived Designer (api/tools/designer-1.0.zip).

For a complete list of changes, check out the release notes.

New SDK, Gadget Designer, and sample gadgets

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 1:45 PM

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

We've released a new version of the Google Desktop SDK. This release adds sample gadgets for features introduced in 5.5, introduces a new page that describes all the samples, updates all the gadgets to have tags that indicate Mac compatibility, and includes a Gadget Designer that better supports the latest version of Google Desktop.

The new samples cover combobox, idealBoundingRect, and image manipulation using colorMultiply and cropMaintainAspect. Here's a snapshot of the image manipulation sample gadget:


A new sample gadget directory page (api\samples\gadgets\Directory.html) describes every sample gadget and points to related links. Even if you're already familiar with the SDK, you might want to check out the directory — it'll give you a fresh look at the gadget samples. We've also reworked the folder hierarchy, moving advanced gadgets to a demos folder.

As far as Mac compatibility goes, we've added <platform> tags to all the manifest files (which you should already be doing). A few samples (such as EventAPI and DragDrop) rely on features that aren't supported on the Mac version. These gadgets are explicitly marked as incompatible using the tag. Also, the RSS Demo gadget does not currently work on the Mac; it will be updated to support the Mac in the near future. In general, most gadgets work on the Mac unless you break one of the guidelines in Writing a Cross-Platform Gadget.

In case you didn't know, the Mac gadget API is currently one version behind (equivalent to version 5.1). 5.5 features won't be implemented until the next Mac release. For full Mac compatibility, be careful when using 5.5 features such button.caption and <item>.

Gadget Designer 1.1 has been released

Friday, October 19, 2007 at 9:52 AM

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

We just released Gadget Designer 1.1, so be sure to grab the latest SDK and try it out. This version of the Gadget Designer brings new features, stability improvements, and support for the new 5.5 API. It's all documented in the release notes.

As you might have noticed already, the old Gadget Designer is incompatible with Google Desktop 5.5, so you will need the new Designer if you're running the latest version of Google Desktop. If you're still running an older version of Google Desktop, you'll need to use the old Designer. The October 16 version of the SDK includes both the new and the old versions of the Designer.

If you have bug reports or feedback, drop us a note at the Google Desktop Developer group.

The screenshot below shows my favorite new feature: You can now edit XML source files directly, which means you should be able to work exclusively in the Gadget Designer from now on.

Open source SDK samples

Friday, September 14, 2007 at 2:01 PM

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

The sample gadgets in the Google Desktop SDK have been open sourced under Apache License 2.0. We've also set up a project over at code.google.com, so feel free to report issues or provide feedback on the sample gadgets.

Since the SDK code is part of a Google Code project, you can easily browse or search the source code. This may make for some great morning reading material, and it also lets you find URLs for the source files. For example, if you're writing a blog post about the Query API, you might want to point to QueryAPI/main.js.

RSS gadget and tutorial

Friday, September 07, 2007 at 8:26 AM

Posted by James Yum, Support Engineer (Google Desktop Team)

We've released a new SDK that introduces the RSS template gadget. By modifying this sample gadget, you can create an RSS feed reader gadget within minutes. Being the programmers we are, we couldn't help but add some geeky features:

• Skinnable - The visual elements are in a single folder (default). You can easily skin the gadget by replacing images or modifying a few XML files.
  
• Customizable feed parser - The gadget can parse most RSS and Atom feeds out of the box. However, you can write custom parsing code if needed.
• Production ready - The gadget properly handles the little details that tend to be overlooked. It's resizable and scrollable, and it works offline.

Kathy also wrote a great tutorial that shows you how to modify the template to make your own gadget.

We made this sample gadget to save you time and frustration. I'm sure you've had ideas for your own RSS gadget so please try modifying the sample gadget to show your favorite feed, and submit your gadget.

We're very interested in your ideas and feedback. Our goal for the RSS template gadget is that it should be easy enough for new developers to use and flexible enough to cover most needs. Let us know what you think on the forum.