Creating a Google Gadget

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 11:00pm Sunday 27 September 2009

With the ever increasing number of job boards, social networking sites, RSS feeds etc. We need to make it easier for users to discover and subscribe to your content. Google Gadgets (aka widget, plugin, module) can be a great way to present and share information to your website users across multiple platforms.

Previously, we have looked at various Examples of Job Search Widgets and have even stepped through the process of Creating a Job Search Widget.

Google Gadgets are miniature objects made by Google users that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web. You can add gadgets you like to your iGoogle (mobile/desktop), Google Desktop and even your own website.

Try adding these 2 examples to your Google homepage or desktop

In this example, we are using the widget code we developed in our previous article titled Creating a Job Search Widget as well as utilizing the Google Gadget API. Once we have created this XML page, we can submit it to Google and then add it to our iGoogle homepage.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Module> <ModulePrefs title="Recruitment Directory TEST" height="250" author="Recruitment Directory" author_email="thomas@recruitmentdirectory.com.au" thumbnail="http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/images/blog/googlegadget_sep09.gif" screenshot="http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/images/blog/googlegadget_sep09.gif" /> <Content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/images/blog/jobsearch_widget.js"> </script> ]]> </Content> </Module>