This is some great news for you web designers out there. You can now create your own themes for iGoogle and submit them to the theme directory for others to enjoy! You can even create dynamic themes that change according to the time of day.
Here are some links to help get you started.
Theme Directory
Developer Guide
Submit a Theme
Themes API Group
I’ve been reading through a lot of the comments this morning and noticed that some people don’t have access to all the options for their gadgets. Google has fixed that problem by adding a scrollbar to the options page for universal gadgets. Another problem that people have reported is that they see a 10-15px white border around the gadgets of Google Desktop. You should update or install the latest version of Google Desktop to fix these problems.
Now you can customize the spider before adding it to iGoogle or embedding it to your webpage.
http://www.abowman.com/google-modules/spider/?edit=true
The background image option is not working from the customization pages when adding the gadgets to iGoogle. It doesn’t seem to like the forward slashes and the semicolon.
Here are the new customization pages for the the Fish and Treefrog gadgets:
http://www.abowman.com/google-modules/fish/?edit=true
http://www.abowman.com/google-modules/tree-frog/?edit=true
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.