I just finished creating a customization page for the Turtle Gadget that you can use before you add them to iGoogle or your webpage. This should make it easier for users to get the turtles looking the way they want them to look. I will be making pages like this for the other gadgets soon.
I rewrote the color chooser gadget in actionscript/flex and added new features that allow users to more easily find the colors they want. Now instead of just having sliders for RGB, you can point to the color you want or use the HSV and RGB sliders.
You can now add up to five turtles to the turtle gadget. If you already have the turtle gadget installed, you should see that he/she has a new friend.
The next feature I will be adding is the ability to change colors. I’m going to work on the behavior of the turtles too. I’d like them to be able to get tired and full. It would also be nice if they could move around without user interaction. Your suggestions are welcomed.
I upgraded the type-it gadget to actionscript 3 and made the intermediate and advanced modes a little more difficult. For some reason, the font I used in actionscript 2 would not load in actionscript 3 using the flex compiler.
I removed all the intermediate and advanced high scores that were earned with the previous version.
I finally finished version one of the turtle gadget tonight. Right now, you can feed the turtle, pick him up, and make him swim or walk to your mouse. Over the next few days, I will be making improvements and fixing bugs.
This gadget was built using actionscript 3 with the free flex sdk.
Did you know that you can change the widths of your gadgets on iGoogle? To do this, click the down arrow to the right of one of your tabs and then select “Edit this tab” from the drop down menu. You should now see this window:
This is making me think that I should add an option to the Tree Frog, Fish, Spider, etc. that lets the user set the height of the gadget. You could then fill one whole tab with one gadget or you could make some small square gadgets with the four column configuration.
Lately, I’ve been playing around with Google Custom Search Engines. All you have to do to build a search engine is sign in to their site with your Google login and press the “Create a Custom Search Engine” button and fill out the simple form. There are a lot nice features such as being able to create search engines with other people, being able to add your search engines to iGoogle or webpages as gadgets, and being able to link your search engine to an adsense account.
You can check out all the search engines I’ve created so far at my search engine page.
I added a “Release Fly” option to the tree frog gadget a couple days ago that allows you to feed your frog without clicking. You can set it to release a fly every 5, 10, 20, 30, or 60 seconds. This feature is nice for keeping your frog entertained while you work.