What can you do with developerWorks on your desktop?
developerWorks offers resources of all kinds: technical articles, how-to tutorials, tips, downloads, product information, forums, blogs, and more. Now you can take this award-winning content straight to your workspace with developer gizmos. Create your own custom developerWorks Gadgets, Modules, and Widgets directly from the developerWorks custom feeds application or any developerWorks community topic space portlet. (My Yahoo is coming in August for spaces). Own an Apple iPhone? Check out the developerWorks app at http://ibm.com/developerworks/iphone.You can also download the all-new developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop. It is truly content on demand—at the click of a button.
Recognizing that syndication mashup sites, such as iGoogle and My Yahoo, are the wave of the future, what better way to access developerWorks content than right within your personalized page?
Better yet, there's no programming or training required, no endless searching through a directory; all you have to do is click a button! And the developerWorks techies have created the Google Gadgets, Yahoo Widgets, and Netvibes Modules for you—watch this demo to see how it works.
Export content from a developerWorks community topic space
See developerWorks on your desktop in action
Learn how to export developerWorks content as a Google Gadget, Netvibes Module or My Yahoo Widget, or add a developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop.
Show me.
(Download Adobe Flash Player.
See more about animated demos.)
developerWorks has more than 13 (and growing) spaces, including Game development, Web innovation, Ajax, and more. Portlet content can be podcasts, wikis, blogs, technical briefings, feature stories, RSS feeds, tutorials, and more with over 15 categories to choose from. Now you can export any developerWorks spaces portlet as a Google Gadget or Netvibes Module; just click the icon in the bottom-right corner.
Figure 1 shows you how to add a space portlet as a Google Gadget or Netvibes Module.
Figure 1. Add developerWorks spaces portlet as a Google Gadget or Netvibes Module
Create a Gadget, Module, or Widget using custom feeds
Create your own custom developerWorks Google Gadget, My Yahoo Widget, or Netvibes Module directly from the developerWorks custom feeds application. Figure 2, below, shows the developerWorks custom feeds page. You choose your favorite topics and select up to two information types.
Figure 2. Build your own custom developerWorks feed
At the bottom of the page shown above, in Step 4, you just click on one of the mashup site options to add the custom feeds to your preferred page. See Figure 3, below.
Figure 3. Add your feed to your iGoogle, Netvibes, or My Yahoo page
That's all it takes to add your customized developerWorks content to your personal mashup page.
developerWorks also offers the capability to create RSS or ATOM feeds based on your selections, or you can add the feeds directly to your personal site using the HTML that's auto-generated from the application based on your preferences. And visitors to your site can export the same developerWorks feeds to iGoogle, Netvibes, or My Yahoo.
developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop
Want to keep up with developerWorks, even at a moment's notice, without ever leaving your desktop? Introducing the developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop (Download it now!). All the power of the parent site, none of the fuss over browsing. Using a simple options interface, you can select or deselect what content (such as from developerWorks technology and brand areas) you want to view. Go back and alter your choices at any time.
Plus, it keeps you in the loop with the latest offerings appended in under a minute to your desktop gadget, piped from developerWorks to you. It's just-in-time content at your fingertips.
Figure 4. developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop>
developerWorks iPhone application
See developerWorks on your iPhone in action
See how to use your iPhone to get up-to-the-minute developerWorks content, on demand and in your own time.
Show me.
(Download Adobe Flash Player.
See more about animated demos.)
Do you have an Apple iPhone? Well, developerWorks is making it even easier for you to get up-to-date developerWorks feeds on your phone. Simply point your browser to http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/iphone and you'll get a complete listing of all developerWorks zones, brands, and topics. Scroll through the list and choose the one that interests you. Review the most recent feeds and go directly to any article on our site in just seconds. It's that easy.
Figure 5. developerWorks iPhone application
Figure 6. developerWorks iPhone news feed
These offerings only just scratch the surface of the ideas that developerWorks has for providing a user-centered design for the site. By providing the means to export content that is of interest to you and add it to iGoogle, Netvibes, or My Yahoo or download it to your developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop, you can now scope developerWorks content to your interests and access it right alongside your weather, news, and e-mail. Using Gadgets, Widgets, and Modules can save you the time and effort it would normally take to browse any traditional Website.
Figure 7, below, shows an example iGoogle page with some customized developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop items displayed.
Figure 7. Sample customized iGoogle page
Syndication mashups such as iGoogle, My Yahoo, and Netvibes provide directories from which to grab content. developerWorks lets you select the content you want directly from the Website through the community topics spaces and developerWorks custom feeds application, doing all the programming for you. Adding your favorite developerWorks content is as easy as clicking a button, and you will never have to browse the directory again. See Figures 8 and 9, below.
Figure 8. Add developerWorks content to your iGoogle page
Figure 9. Add developerWorks content to your Netvibes page
You won't even miss a step because shipped with every developer gizmo is a scrolling marquee (Figure 10 below) of the top, up-to-the minute offerings from developerWorks. Don't like scrolling text? You have the option to change the feature to a drop-down menu instead (Figure 11 below). Even beyond that, you can extend your customized developerWorks feeds that you have placed on your own Website so that users can export those feeds as a Google Gadget, Netvibes Module, or Yahoo Widget with the click of an icon.
Figure 10. Scrolling resources option
Figure 11. Resources as a drop-down menu option
developerWorks is looking at every opportunity to expand the syndication model. We anticipate extending this current model well beyond iGoogle, Netvibes, and My Yahoo to provide any widget, gadget, module, and gizmo that you prefer. We are exploring the capabilities with every collaboration powerhouse, including mobile devices or gaming environments of your choosing. Please visit our forums and give us your thoughts and ideas—we'd love to hear from you!
developerWorks provides a simple way to add customized developerWorks content to your workspace, whether your preference is your iGoogle, Netvibes, or My Yahoo page or as a developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop. Now you can start to customize your developerWorks experience with no programming, training, or registration required.
If this is your first encounter with a developerWorks article that includes demos, here are a few things you might want to know:
Demos are an optional way to see the same steps described in the article. To see an animated demo, click the Show me link. The demo opens in a new browser window. Each demo contains a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. Use the navigation bar to to pause, exit, rewind, or fast forward portions of the demo. You may need to scroll to see some areas of the demo. JavaScript must be enabled in your browser and Macromedia Flash Player 6 or higher must be installed.
Download Adobe Flash Player.
| Description | Name | Size | Download method |
|---|---|---|---|
| developerWorks Google Desktop Gadget1 | dwdesktop.zip | 59KB | HTTP |
Information about download methods
Note
- Please take a look at the readme file included in this zip file before using the developerWorks Google Desktop Gadget.
Learn
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Learn about Developer gizmos and what they include.
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See the developerWorks spaces page for a comprehensive look at the developerWorks spaces offerings on developerWorks.
- This
interactive tour shows you the basic steps involved in creating a space on developerWorks (Adobe Flash Player required.).
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Learn about mashups in the developerWorks article Mashups: The new breed of Web app (August 2006) and The ultimate mashup tutorial series (August 2006).
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Check out the following community topics: Ajax, and Mashups.
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Melinda Pfeiffer has been an editor with the developerWorks team for more than five years. She acquires, edits, and publishes XForms content. Previously, she was a Web editor with the Information Management team. Prior to joining IBM, Melinda worked as a Webmaster for a (now-defunct) dot-com and she also has extensive Internet marketing and IT technical communications experience. She received her M.A. and B.A. from North Carolina State University.
Table of contents
- What can you do with developerWorks on your desktop?
- Export content from a developerWorks community topic space
- Create a Gadget, Module, or Widget using custom feeds
- developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop
- developerWorks iPhone application
- What are the benefits?
- What's next?
- Summary
- Animated demos
- Download
- Resources
- About the author
- Comments
