Gadgets for your website

Gadgets for Your Webpage

With all of the work that you put into designing your digital presence, you still have room to add more.

 

Most blogs and wikis have access to collections of gadgets or widgets that are designed to fit or plug in directly. Other websites may offer widgets for a particular resource. For example, The Weather Network provides a weather gadget that I've plugged into the index page of the Student Reference Portal. With a drop down menu, I can add up to five locations throughout the district so that you can check the weather without leaving the comfort of your computer. This is particulary helpful if, oh let's say you have a location without a window!

 

The grand daddy of all gadgets is Google. With its iGoogle homepage, you can add virtually any gadget that you want to open on your page. PBWiki interfaces nicely to these resources. Just insert a productivity plugin and choose your Google gadget and you have instant content for your webpage.

 

How about a regular webpage though? It's done easily enough. Google provides you the code and you just insert it into your page. So, if you just need a clock, it can magically appear.

 

Google Clock
	Gadgets powered by Google

 

Let's do it! First of all, you need to head over to the Google gadgets page. The link can be found here. There are hundreds of these things!

There's a cute little spider gadget that has a spider walking around following your cursor. Let's get that.

 

 

Click the button to "Add to your webpage".

Often, the developer will let you customize the gadget before it goes live into your webpage. Go ahead and play with it until you get the perfect gadget and then "Get the Code".

 

You're just a few seconds away...

 

A window will open with the actual code that will make the magic happen. Select the code and copy it. It's really simple. Just click in the middle of the code somewhere and CTRL-A will select it all, and CTRL-C will copy it.

 

Now, we have to put this code into your webpage.

 

Again, not a terribly difficult thing. Just position the cursor where you would like the gadget to appear and switch from "Design" mode to "Code" mode. You're now looking at the raw HTML of your webpage. Not to worry. Your cursor is exactly where the gadget will appear, right? CTRL-V will paste it into place. Switch back to "Design" mode and the deed is done.

 

 

You won't see the actual gadget in action until you save your webpage and view it in a browser. Oh, the anticipation!

Here's my spider. Feel free to play with him/her with your cursor.

__UP_spiderName__
	Gadgets powered by Google

 

Now that you're armed with this new technique, feel free to add your own content to your resource and make it that much more interesting.

 

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