Topic Archive: iGoogle

GWT, Gadgets and OpenSocial, Part 2

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, November 17, 2008 @ 6:15 pm

Note: It is assumed that you know your way around GWT and Eclipse for purposes of this tutorial.

While developing OpenSocial applications can be a bit tricky, getting set up to develop can be a real pain in the neck. For this installment of OpenSocial and GWT, I'm going to go through the basics of setting up a simple Hello World gadget with iGoogle. We'll get into the details of signing up for other OpenSocial containers, testing, and so on, later. Right now we're just going to do the basics.

So, what do you need to build a Google Gadget with GWT for iGoogle? You need the following:

1. The Google Web Toolkit
2. The GWT Google Gadget API
3. An account on iGoogle
4. Access to the iGoogle sandbox
5. Some public server space so you can serve up your gadget to iGoogle

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The courage to redesign

Brian Dillard, Monday, November 3, 2008 @ 5:12 pm

People are still griping about the recent redesigns of Facebook and iGoogle, but I think we should cheer on any company brave enough to disregard user feedback and embrace change.

Lots of big-name, highly successful sites eventually reach a state of paralysis in which they're too scared of alienating their customers to examine their interaction design and information architecture from a fresh perspective.

The cautionary tale of Amazon.com

Look at Amazon: The online retailer adopted DHTML navigation just last year - at least 5 years after most other big sites - because its tab interface had grown so comically large. Nevertheless, huge chunks of the Amazon user experience are still massively broken:

• Once you've started down the checkout process, the site tries to keep you from getting back to your shopping cart to add or remove additional items. If you use your back button to do so, you've got to start the checkout process all over again.
• Wish lists offer perhaps the most confusing, error-prone user interface I've ever had the displeasure to experience.
• Link targets on a wide variety of UI controls are tiny and persnickety enough to elicit involuntary profanity.

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