Another battle of Microsoft and Google

Great! Adam Sah, a software engineer at Google, has announced the release of Google Homepage API. This API lets developers to create modules like Windows Live do in Google"s way. In contrast, Microsoft has promoted the use of Live at microsoftgadgets.com. For them, every pieces of work are called gadgets. For Google, they are called modules. Google also provides content directory as same as microsoftgadgets.com do. At present, there are only 5 modules listed in the directory and all of them created by staffs.

Microsoft Gadgets

A gadget consists of a manifest, JavaScript(s) and CSS(s). That means developer must have a web server to upload 3 files and use the manifest as the entry point. Actually, the manifest is a RSS. You may read a simple tutorial for more detail.

Google Modules

A module of Google Homepage is simpler than Microsoft since it is just HTML and JavaScript encapsulated in an XML. In other words, a module is an XML. For example, below is the Hello, World module.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Module>
  <ModulePrefs title="hello world example" />
  <Content type="html">
     <![CDATA[
       Hello, world!
     ]]>
  </Content>
</Module>

If you don’t have a web server to host this module, Google offers Google Base to host your module. As the best of all, developers may define user preferences and module preferences easily via XML tag.

For further information, please read Developer Guide.