Updates are back! As the launch of OpenSocial support for iGoogle draws ever closer, we wanted to give you guys more ability to test and refine your gadget's use of the activity stream.
To that end we encourage you to install the Updates gadget which is now actively displaying Update streams from contacts in your Friend's group. Remember, this is not the final UI - when we launch, Updates will be built into the container, rather than appearing in a standalone gadget.
As you already know, in the wild there will be limits on the amount of Updates we allow from gadgets, to prevent spam. As of right now, we are considering a daily quota of three Updates per user per gadget. This limit will not be enforced on gadgets in the sandbox so that you can continue testing your code without worrying about these protections, but be aware that there will be some anti-spam restrictions when these features go live.
For more on Updates, check out the OpenSocial tutorial's activities section.
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Thursday 14 May 2009
The importance of being unsociable
A lot of the content we post on this blog is about social. Social is new, social is big, social is better (all true!) ... but, non-social is important too, and gadgets should behave gracefully when users have not enabled social features, or they aren't available. Not only is a large part of iGoogle's userbase not signed in, but when users add a new gadget to their pages, for the first time, it is always added without social features enabled. Users enable the social ACLs in a separate step, after the gadget has been added to the page.
Until they do that, the gadget will be rendered without social access - meaning that every single user will see your gadget without social access at least once. Plan for it! Make sure you can handle that case, even if you only display a message prompting users to sign in and enable social access so that your gadget can operate correctly.
For help with detecting whether a user's social functionality has been enabled and other iGoogle-specific OpenSocial questions, check out the Testing iGoogle State gadget. This cribsheet builds on the OpenSocial tutorial to provide a rapid way to look up example code for common social gadget tasks.
Many of the folks who contribute to OpenSocial and iGoogle will be at Google I/O in San Francisco on May 27-28. We love to talk about this stuff, so check out the Google I/O site to sign up and join us.
Until they do that, the gadget will be rendered without social access - meaning that every single user will see your gadget without social access at least once. Plan for it! Make sure you can handle that case, even if you only display a message prompting users to sign in and enable social access so that your gadget can operate correctly.
For help with detecting whether a user's social functionality has been enabled and other iGoogle-specific OpenSocial questions, check out the Testing iGoogle State gadget. This cribsheet builds on the OpenSocial tutorial to provide a rapid way to look up example code for common social gadget tasks.
Many of the folks who contribute to OpenSocial and iGoogle will be at Google I/O in San Francisco on May 27-28. We love to talk about this stuff, so check out the Google I/O site to sign up and join us.
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Gadget Checker: A simple way to make good gadgets great
Writing software is hard, and it's easy for bugs to creep in. Gadgets are no different. And while developing gadgets here at Google, we discovered that many gadget bugs only show up when you've finished developing -- like when Japanese users can't see that translation you worked on for ages, or when your gadget turns out to be frustratingly slow.
It's important to have great gadgets in iGoogle. To help you, we'd like to share a tool that we wrote to catch many common gadget errors: Gadget Checker. We like to think of it as a small tool with a big impact. Use it before you submit your gadget to the Directory to pick up errors such as missing ModulePrefs attributes and missing images, scripts or stylesheets. It also makes suggestions for avoiding common latency traps, like unused API libraries, and for internationalizing your gadget. Simply load a gadget and run the tests, and you may find that you've fallen into one of the common problems. If so, there's advice in the gadget on how to address the issue.
To allow developers to use the tool while developing their gadget, Gadget Checker can open a gadget saved as a local file or in the Google Gadget Editor. (Tip: Consider using a special iGoogle tab containing Gadget Checker and the GGE next to each other, just for developing gadgets.) Once you've opened a local file in Gadget Code Checker, you can save it directly to GGE to fix all the bugs you found. Gadget Checker can even check any existing gadget simply by entering its URL.
Of course, the list of checks is nowhere near complete. If there's some pet peeve that you wish Gadget Code Checker looked for, feel free to let us know. We hope Gadget Code Checker makes it easier for you to develop great gadgets, and are looking forward to developing additional tools to help too.
One more thing. We hope you'll join us at Google I/O in late May. It's a useful way to interact with Google engineers and other developers. And two days in San Francisco isn't too shabby, either! Register today.
It's important to have great gadgets in iGoogle. To help you, we'd like to share a tool that we wrote to catch many common gadget errors: Gadget Checker. We like to think of it as a small tool with a big impact. Use it before you submit your gadget to the Directory to pick up errors such as missing ModulePrefs attributes and missing images, scripts or stylesheets. It also makes suggestions for avoiding common latency traps, like unused API libraries, and for internationalizing your gadget. Simply load a gadget and run the tests, and you may find that you've fallen into one of the common problems. If so, there's advice in the gadget on how to address the issue.
To allow developers to use the tool while developing their gadget, Gadget Checker can open a gadget saved as a local file or in the Google Gadget Editor. (Tip: Consider using a special iGoogle tab containing Gadget Checker and the GGE next to each other, just for developing gadgets.) Once you've opened a local file in Gadget Code Checker, you can save it directly to GGE to fix all the bugs you found. Gadget Checker can even check any existing gadget simply by entering its URL.
Of course, the list of checks is nowhere near complete. If there's some pet peeve that you wish Gadget Code Checker looked for, feel free to let us know. We hope Gadget Code Checker makes it easier for you to develop great gadgets, and are looking forward to developing additional tools to help too.
One more thing. We hope you'll join us at Google I/O in late May. It's a useful way to interact with Google engineers and other developers. And two days in San Francisco isn't too shabby, either! Register today.
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