Google Docs Gadget

I'm a big user of Google Docs Drive. And a Google Apps customer. I've been using the Google Labs Google Docs Gadget in my e-mail instance for years.

The Google Docs Gadget is recognized across the web as a valuable Lab tool. For example, this article includes it in its list of "Recommended Gmail & Calendar Labs."

As described in this document the Labs gadget:

Adds a box in the left column which displays your Google Docs. Shows recent docs, starred docs, and has fast search.

Really nice functions. Saves you from having to open a new Drive window just to open, create, or search for a document.

Every now and then something went "bump" in the background and it wouldn't work for a while. Then without a word it'd start back working.

It was useful enough to put up with this level of support.

Until...

This spring the search function began getting errors. I looked at it and the problem was just that the syntax for the URL for Google Drive's search had changed. Looked like a trivial change so I thought I'd just wait and it'd be fixed when they got around to it.

Then last week the gadget disappeared from my e-mail. And from the Google Labs page. It looks like some of Google's "Spring Cleaning" had killed the Lab gadget.

A quick search of the Google Forums showed that I was not alone. One of the posts even had a quick work-around including how to implement it.

I copied his XML and made minor changes. Then I uploaded it to my web site and added it as a gadget via URL.

Here's what my version looks like:

Here's the xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><br /> <!-- http://brainglow.com/test/docsgadget.xml --><br /> <Module><br /> <br /> <ModulePrefs title="Google Drive" title_url="http://drive.google.com/" thumbnail="https://www.google.com/ig/modules/docs-thm.png" screenshot="https://www.google.com/ig/modules/docs.png" description="Replacement for the broken Google Docs/Drive Gadget for GMail" height="180" width="600" author="Ben Moore" ><br /> <Require feature="dynamic-height"/><br /> <Require feature="setprefs" /><br /> </ModulePrefs><br /> <UserPref name="iframeURL" display_name="URL to content" required="true" default_value="https://docs.google.com/API/IGoogle?container=gm&view=default&lang=en&country=US&sanitize=0&authuser=0&libs=dynamic-height%3Asetprefs%3Acore%3Agoogle.waitforload%3Aauth-refresh&parent=https%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fhtml&up_numDocuments=8&up_viewPreference=opened_by_me&mid=1" /><br /> <br /> <Content type="html" view="default,canvas"><![CDATA[ <div id='dest'><img src="https://www.google.com/ig/images/spinner.gif"/></div><script type="text/javascript"> gadgets.util.registerOnLoadHandler(doRender); function doRender(){ // setup variables var prefs = new gadgets.Prefs(); var iframeURL = prefs.getString('iframeURL'); var scroll = "no"; var height = 180; var width = 600; if (gadgets.window) { var viewport = gadgets.window.getViewportDimensions(); if (viewport.width) { width = viewport.width; // alert("WV: " + viewport.width); } if (viewport.height) { // height = viewport.height; // alert("VH: " + viewport.height); } } var iframe = document.createElement('iframe'); iframe.setAttribute('width', width + 'px'); iframe.setAttribute('height', height + 'px'); iframe.setAttribute('frameborder','no'); if(scroll){ iframe.setAttribute('scrolling', scroll); } iframe.setAttribute('src', iframeURL); var dest = document.getElementById('dest'); dest.innerHTML = ''; // dispose of the spinner dest.appendChild(iframe); // and insert the iframe } </script><br /> ]]></Content><br /> </Module>

Works perfectly, for now.