November 6th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Benjamin Schirmer, Gadget DeveloperWhenever you create a gadget that interacts with the Internet — one that reads an RSS feed or sends data to your website, for example — you need the XMLHttpRequest object. To help you understand how this…
November 1st, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Cătălin Avram, Gadget Developer (and recent Google Desktop intern)Have you ever been stuck debating whether or not to add a new feature to your gadget? Perhaps the new feature might consume too much screen real estate or too many machine re…
October 29th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by James Yum, Developer Programs Engineer (Google Desktop Team)Many thanks to the developers who developed and submitted Halloween gadgets. They were very well done and sent chills down our spines. In case you missed it, we blogged about them ov…
October 24th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Cătălin Avram, Intern (Google Desktop Team)Empty divs with a background color are a great way to add borders and shadows to GD elements. As an example, consider the edit box, which normally has a white background and no border. Add a colore…
October 19th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
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 f…
October 17th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Cătălin Avram, Intern (Google Desktop Team)As a Hall of Famer turned Google Desktop intern, I want to introduce the just-released Time Around the World gadget. This was one of the awesome projects I got to work on during a great summer inte…
October 15th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Bijoy Thangaraj R, Gadget DeveloperFor the Cricket World Cup 2007, Google launched three cricket-related gadgets: Cricket World Cup Scores, Cricket Videos, and Cricket Images and News. Recently, Google open-sourced all three of these gadgets …
October 10th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Stefan Sundin, Gadget DeveloperRun the images in your scripts through pngcrush, an excellent PNG compressor. It can help shave off some extra KBs without any loss of quality. For best compression, use the -brute option.Have a tip you’d like t…
October 8th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Teodor Filimon, Gadget DeveloperHow can a program help its users? Through the interface and the features it offers. And how can a program help its programmers? Many techniques are out there, but one stands out: object-oriented programming (OO…
October 5th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Kathy Walrath and Mihai Ionescu (Google Desktop Team)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 iGoo…
October 3rd, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Jeremy Glassenberg, Gadget DeveloperFor a gadget to have a good user experience, the interface should be fairly intuitive. One Google Desktop feature that comes in handy for creating the most intuitive and convenient gadgets is the customizab…
October 1st, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Vishnu S., Gadget DeveloperAs a new Desktop gadget developer, I’d like to share a short story about my experience with developing gadgets and interacting with the developer community. In the end, developing Google Desktop gadgets has turned o…
September 27th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Teodor Filimon, Gadget DeveloperWe use their programs, we read their documentation, and we follow their posts. I’m right, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. 
But what do we know about the people who create, maintain, and support Google…
September 24th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Benjamin Schirmer, Gadget DeveloperAs you work on a gadget, try to split the JavaScript code into logical pieces, moving those pieces into separate .js files. Keep in mind that each view’s XML file can include multiple .js files, and multiple…
September 19th, 2007 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
Posted by Krzysztof Olczyk, Gadget DeveloperI’ve been interested in programming and software development as long as I can remember, and I’ve used a huge variety of technologies and environments. One day I wanted to try something new, so I installed Goo…