Thursday, November 14, 2013

DIY iGoogle Upgrade

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I’ve upgraded the DIY “iGoogle” start page.


You can see the latest version here: http://nbe.me/demo

The previous version is here: http://nbe.me/olddemov2

The previous previous version is here: http://nbe.me/olddemo


Major items:

1. Each widget has its own “Settings” page which allows you to edit settings. Just click on the “settings” button at the top right of any widget:

Widget Settings Button


2. You can add / edit stocks & shares. If you click on the settings button for the stock widget you get a screen which lets you change the existing stock codes, quantities and buy prices.:

Stock Edit Screen

To delete a stock item, click on the red “X” button.

To move a stock item up a line, click on the blue up-arrow (↑)

To move a stock item down a line, click on the blue down-arrow (↓)

To add a stock item, fill in the blanks and click the green “+” button.

To save changes, click on the “SAVE” button.

To cancel changes or close the edit dialog, click on the [x] button at the top right of the window.


3. You can edit the links in the top-bar by clicking on the “*” to the right of the links in the top bar.


4. You can add / edit / remove widgets by clicking on the “Setup” link in the top bar.

setup

To delete a widget, click on the red “X” button.

To move a widget up a line, click on the blue up-arrow (↑)

To move a widget down a line, click on the blue down-arrow (↓)

To add a widget, fill in the blanks and click the green “+” button.

To save changes, click on the “SAVE” button.

To cancel changes or close the edit dialog, click on the [x] button at the top right of the window.

Click “Factory Reset” to clear all your settings and revert back to the original settings that you downloaded from the website.


5. All settings are stored locally on your hard drive using the HTML5 “localStorage” facility. This is like a cookie, only bigger. The page settings were over 4,000 bytes in size, so would not fit in a cookie which officially can’t be larger than about 4,000 bytes. Local storage can be as large as your hard drive, so there are no storage limits, and the security / privacy settings are the same as for cookies.


You can download the source code here:

http://nbe.me/demo/d.zip


If you plan to use the weather widget, please change the “Weather API Key” in the “Setup” screen. Since lots of people are using this start page, the current API key will run out of API calls each day and won’t work. There are instructions on getting your own keys here:

http://tech.neilennis.com/index.php/diy-replacement-for-igoogle/


As with all previous versions, you don’t need to load this start page on a web server. It will run fine from a folder on your computer. Just unzip the zip file, and click on index.html.


If you plan to put it on a public web server, you might want to password protect it with a htaccess file to protect your privacy.


Please try it out and let me know how you go.


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