I find that I have to agree with Gavin and Jeremy. I certainly
always thought that the "urlparam" described in the gadgets reference
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/reference.html#Userprefs_Ref
implied that the passing of preferences to url-type gadgets in the URL
was, in some sense, a documented and approved way of doing this stuff.
I appreciate that, as a gadget hacker, I'm basically playing in
Google's
sandpit and it's entirely up to Google what toys are provided.
I also appreciate the point that using the API is, by many measures,
"the right way to do it". However, the fact is that user preferences
have been available in the query string for a long time - perhaps
since
the inception of gadgets. This of course made it trivial for whatever
was at the end of the URL to grab and use these parameters as
required.
It's natural enough that people might use this to feed their gadgets.
I'm not saying that makes it the correct thing to do, just that it's
understandable that this has come to pass. That said, I think there'd
be a lot of happy URL-type gadget developers out there if it were to
be
resolved to keep user preferences in the query string for the longer
term.
One aspect of this recent change I have some trouble reconciling is
that
the parameters passed to a gadget appeared to differ, depending upon
whether the gadget was sitting on an iGoogle page or on an external
webpage.
During the whole affair I found my gadgets that had ended up on
webpages
to be unaffected, happily receiving userpref values in the query
string,
as always. Perhaps this is one of the joys of using what turns out to
be an undocumented feature, but it will be interesting to see how this
may change in the future.
Rob, thank you for the example code you posted in the other thread...
my knowledge of javascript is certainly rising towards zero.
I've had a crack at incorporating this in to a gadget I'm working on
at the moment (switching it from type "url" to "html"), and I do have
a question, please. The gadget seems to work well when added to an
iGoogle page, e.g.
http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&moduleurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telescope-net.com%2Fgmodules%2Fyour-moon.xml
However, if I try to use the "Add this gadget to your webpage"
previewer, e.g.
http://gmodules.com/ig/creator?synd=open&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telescope-net.com%2Fgmodules%2Fyour-moon.xml
I just get a white box. Clicking "Get the Code" gives exactly the
right
code to make the gadget work on a webpage, it's just that the gadget
doesn't
appear in the previewer box. I have only managed to get it to appear
if
I omit all of the "gadgets.*" calls. Is there something else needed
in the
XML file to make the gadget appear correctly on that /ig/creator page?
Is there something that I'm doing wrong in my boneheaded ignorance?
Thanks!!
Regards,
Roy
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