Can gadgets from iGoogle can actually run in a Shindig container?

[Amos Whye <he...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm trying to add basic widget-container functionality to my webapp, so that
users will be able to add Google Gadgets to it.

One method I checked was adding the widgets in the same way they are
embedded in external sites (via a script tag to igoogle's ifr, the way it's
done via the gadgets open directory:
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open ). Problem is a lot of the
gadget functionality doesn't work, most notably canvas view and
user-customizable user-prefs. Many gadgets seem to depend on this.

I've started playing with Shindig, in the hope that I could use gadgets.js
and perhaps a little bit of server-side code to implement a really basic
gadget container that would support rendering widgets, displaying canvas
view and persisting user prefs.
But I've run into problems. It seems like Shindig doesn't have canvas-view
support out-of-the-box, and from looking at the code of some of the popular
gadgets on iGoogle, it looks like they have a lot of iGoogle-specific code,
with quite a few _IG_* calls, especially in the Flash gadgets.

I'd be happy for some input as to whether you think this second approach is
worthwhile and how much coding effort it will require. Also, are the gadgets
on iGoogle really conforming to the gadget spec and inoperable in other
Gadget containers?

Thanks!

Re: Can gadgets from iGoogle can actually run in a Shindig container?

[Tim Wintle <ti...@teamrubber.com>]

On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 11:46 +0300, Amos Whye wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to add basic widget-container functionality to my webapp, so that
> users will be able to add Google Gadgets to it.

<snip>

> I've started playing with Shindig, in the hope that I could use gadgets.js
> and perhaps a little bit of server-side code to implement a really basic
> gadget container that would support rendering widgets, displaying canvas
> view and persisting user prefs.
> But I've run into problems. It seems like Shindig doesn't have canvas-view
> support out-of-the-box

That's because the display of canvas view and persistence of user prefs
is fairly specific to how you want to handle it on your container (and
needs to be implemented in your site's code). Similarly for how your
database works, how users authenticate against your site etc.

> and from looking at the code of some of the popular
> gadgets on iGoogle, it looks like they have a lot of iGoogle-specific code,
> with quite a few _IG_* calls, especially in the Flash gadgets.

_IG_* calls are supported by shindig - they're in the feature
core.legacy

> I'd be happy for some input as to whether you think this second approach is
> worthwhile and how much coding effort it will require.

Shindig will generate the iframe url (your shindig needs to be hosted on
a domain you control), and deal with most of the complexity, but there
is a fair amount of work involved in managing security tokens, storing
user prefs, etc.

If it's worth it or not is your decision.

> Also, are the gadgets
> on iGoogle really conforming to the gadget spec and inoperable in other
> Gadget containers?

iGoogle should display opensocial gadgets correctly, as should shindig -
individual gadgets may have been written before the spec was public
though.

Tim Wintle