Google Desktop 5.8
September 15th, 2008 | Published in Google Desktop API
A brand new version of Google Desktop is here. (See the announcement.) This release fixes several bugs and adds features based on reports from the issue tracker and developer group. Please check the release notes to see what's new.
UPDATE (Sept 17): To celebrate this release, we threw an hour-long get-together at our Lively developer lounge today.
I think the coolest feature is the ability to embed Flash movies with a few lines of code. We can't wait to start seeing your Flash creations in the gadget gallery. I made a gadget that embeds my favorite YouTube video, which I play about a hundred times a day.
Pressing Tab (or Shift+Tab) now moves the focus to the next (or previous) element. This affects existing gadgets that have implemented Tab traversal manually, so please be sure to test and update those gadgets.
We've added new Personalization APIs to help you better tailor content for the user. Here's an example of retrieving the user's zip code:
var zipCode = google.pers.data.getZipCode()Lastly, for gadgets that are resizable, the heavy resize frame no longer appears. If your gadget has a non-standard visual frame, your users may have difficulty resizing it. To address that, you can now define a custom resize border area.
Thanks everyone for your contributions and please keep letting us know how we can improve Google Desktop.