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Building Google gadgets, Part 1: Fundamentals of Google gadgets

Learn to create your own gadgets

John Muchow (Technical.tutorials@gmail.com), Writer

John Muchow has been immersed in software development since 1988, working in roles from developer to chief software architect to CTO. Since 2000, John has focused on mobile technology, and during this time has had the opportunity to work alongside many high profile businesses including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, Sprint/Nextel, Sun Microsystems, among others. He is also the author of Core J2ME Technology a best-selling wireless developer book that is still published in several foreign languages. John writes about mobile technology, from the developer perspective, on his blog 360Mobile.us.

Summary: In this new Web development series, learn how to develop Google gadgets. Gadgets are small applications that you can add to most any Web page as a means to offer dynamic and rich content. Google has an abundance of gadgets to choose from. However, the most intriguing aspect of gadgets is that you can write them for your own use and then publish them on Google, where other developers can integrate your work into their Web projects.

View more content in this series

Date: 24 Apr 2007
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (1045 KB | 30 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 30968 views
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Before you start

The following sections offer some background information to help you make the most of this tutorial.

About this series

This series provides a solid foundation for you to begin writing your own Google gadgets.

About this tutorial

This tutorial is an overview of the basics for creating Google gadgets. With this information in hand, you can proceed to Part 2, which introduces more advanced features available for gadget developers, such as tabbed interfaces and drag-and-drop support.

Objectives

In this tutorial, you'll learn about creating and personalizing a Google home page, explore the content types available to gadget developers, review JavaScript functions available in the Google core JavaScript library, and write your first gadget.

Prerequisites

This tutorial is written for developers who are familiar with XML, working application programming interfaces (APIs), and coding in the JavaScript language. To get the most from this tutorial, you should have a general familiarity with these concepts.

System requirements

To build and run the examples in this tutorial, you need nothing more than a text editor, an Internet connection, and a passion for coding and debugging.

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