stoplight gadget 1.2

This week we planned to finish version 1.1 of the stoplight gadget. But after our weekly meeting with our professor, we decided to finish both version 1.1 and version 1.2 within the week since there wasn't much of a difference between the two versions. Thus, the jump to version 1.2.

Stoplight gadget version 1.0 only shows a number from a hard coded location. Version 1.2 of the stoplight gadget is now able to show a stoplight image. The first page that the user views when the stoplight gadget is first embedded tells the user to input values into the user preferences. After the user inputs the values in the 'Edit settings' portion of the gadget, a stoplight will appear either red light, yellow light, or green light on.

We still have some problems with the stoplight gadget that we hope we will fix by next week. We first have to figure out what we will show when the gadget is first loaded. Since we do not have any ideas yet, all the gadget does is tell the user that the gadget will needs inputted values in the user preferences. Right now, the gadget only allows for the user to input numbers to check against each other. By the next version of our stoplight, we will allow for the user to compare two strings to one another. We might also try to get the stoplight to be shown with a corresponding message from a different place on their data source.

The biggest problem that we need to address with our professor is the problem of users not being able to edit the settings of the gadget and manipulate the thresholds outside of iGoogle. When we tried to embed the gadget on our google code hosting page, we were not able to manipulate the settings there. Hopefully after doing more research we will find a suitable solution to this problem.

Since we have not published our google gadget yet, but you want to try out the gadget, add the gadget on iGoogle. Here is the URL to the gadget.