Y'all just make this too much fun! I'm looking forward to playing
around with this feature. I did create a quick and dirty little
gadget that takes an address, gecodes it and publishes the lat/long in
the geoinfo group as a test. It works with the existing Listening
Map. Will do more later. The URL is
http://mikeg101.googlepages.com/mylocation.xml Things I have noticed...
1. I installed the PubSub tab to start playing around. My Gadgets
insists that nothing is cached, but I had a heck of a time getting by
the cache on my new gadget on the PubSub tab. Had to do things like
remove the gadget, add it back, reload it and just keep hoping. I
have not noticed this on other tabs. not yet anyway. I'm using
Firefox 2.0.0.6.
2. Will group names be reserved like channel names? It looks like
geoinfo will become a standard group name for talking to maps. Or is
it up to developers to coordinate this?
3. It's late and I can't recall my third point, so I'll close by
saying that this is cool stuff! Thanks!
On Aug 23, 6:52 pm, "Dann (Google Employee)" <d...@google.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone!
> I'm proud to announce "Gadget-to-Gadget Communication", otherwise
> known as PubSub, which is a killer new beta feature that's currently
> available for you all to try out!
> ====
> What is "Gadget-to-Gadget Communication", a.k.a. PubSub?
> PubSub allows multiple gadgets on the same page to send and receive
> data from each other. In other words, you can now build a gadget that
> communicates back and forth with one another. This introduces a brand
> new concept and strategy involved when writing gadgets. Information
> is no longer constrained to fit inside a single gadget. Instead, you
> can now split up various pieces of information amongst multiple
> gadgets and allow them to communicate with each other to paint a
> bigger picture. Gadgets now have the ability to be more closely
> integrated with one another and present a network of information to
> users. If users only care about one particular segment, they can
> simply remove or minimize any gadgets containing extraneous
> information that they don't care about.
> ====
> How does PubSub work?
> PubSub is a new framework which allows 'publisher' gadgets on iGoogle
> to communicate changes to 'subscriber' gadgets that have declared
> interest in those changes. This is currently available only on
> iGoogle and publisher/subscriber gadgets must be on the same page.
> For a list of current issues and limitations, see more information
> below.
> Here's documentation on how to get to started:http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/pubsub.html
> Here's an iGoogle tab you can add to quickly see some simple examples:http://www.google.com/ig/sharetab?source=stb&atr=PubSub&n_32=url%3Dht...
> *Note:* As a beta feature, documentation on PubSub is not currently
> linked to from the Google Gadgets API developer guide or anywhere
> else.
> ====
> What's a BETA-feature?
> It's an early release of a feature in order get valuable feedback from
> real gadget developers (all of you) about the current design along
> with some ideas on how to make it better. We can't promise that you
> won't encounter any bugs since it's still a beta. However, when any
> changes arise, we'll notify everyone about the change by posting it to
> this thread. We're thrilled to hear your opinions on the design as
> well as any creative ideas on how to use it. If you have any
> questions or comments, please let us know.
> In the meantime, here's the current list of limitations and known
> issues:
> -- Need more practical examples. Coming soon.
> -- Does not work in Safari. Works correctly in Firefox and IE.
> -- Only works in iGoogle. Does not work on third-party websites or
> other container pages such as Google Desktop.
> -- Only available to type="html" and type="html-inline" gadgets.
> -- Does not work consistently when multiple inlined (type="html-
> inline") "subscriber" gadgets exist on the same page in iGoogle.
> -- Moving (drag/dropping) a "subscriber" gadget to a different
> position in iGoogle creates an error. PubSub ceases to work
> afterwards.
> -- The "finance_symbol" channel described in the documentation is
> currently broken.
> -- Publisher gadgets cannot pass empty strings to subscriber gadgets.
> -- JavaScript error is sometimes thrown when loading gadgets on
> iGoogle.
> -- Browser 'Stop' buttons sometimes have strange flickering behavior.
> ====
> As always, please reply back with any feedback or comments you may
> have. We'd love to hear from you!
> Have fun!
> Dann
