At long last, the next update to the Ultimate Explorer gadget has been released! And it is a doozy, so here is a list of the things that got added and changed:

• PriceRunner Engine Added: That’s right, you too can compare prices with the best of them in the gadget now. The menu system is a little odd because of space, so when selecting categories, the category menu will change to allow you to pick sub categories. Other than that, we reccommend the “Search 20″ setting for the best results. Don’t worry, you can skip band and forth in the flyout for more details for individual products from the list.
• eBay Engine Overhauled: It looks better, works better, and now works for Canadians and Brits. We went to town with this engine and improved the speed, result sets, overall look and feel, and added more options. You can also specify more types of searches based on the time left on the auction. If you haven’t checked this engine out before, now is a perfect time to do so. (And I don’t want to hear anything about no RSS reading. You know who you are. :p )
• Search Button Changed: Yeah, I know I said I wasn’t going to do it, but in the end, there will be no mistaking the search button for anything else. Ever.
• Individual Engine Options: One of the more peculiar things people will probably notice with this update is the appearance of a strange little icon in the lower right hand corner of the gadget on certain engines. The curious people out there might even mouse over it and perhaps click this wonderful little button, thus opening up a custom options menu for the engine you are currently on! Oh, I hope there are lots of curious people out there because we now have a lot more room for added functionality because of that marvelous little button that looks like a hammer and spanner (Hint: It’s our logo).
• Settings Panel Re-Organized: Well, since we didn’t have to worry about specific stuff, we can now focus on adding more general options to the Settings Panel. If you open it up right now, it might a little emptier, but don’t worry, we’ll figure out how to fill it up over time. Oh, and if you’re looking for the Snap Search selection, it’s now under the Search tab.
• Snap Search Selections modified: Don’t worry about going over the snap search select limit anymore, we fixed it.
• YouTube Search Issue: Fixed an issue were you could scroll past the results of smaller searches.
• Toggle Links Are Not Links: Found out an interesting thing about IE7 and how it handles CSS, keep an eye out, because next update, we’ll be tweaking the gadget to get rid of those ugly looking link borders on most of the elements.
• Multiple Search Words: Fixed. You can now have 3 or more words in a web search and it will indeed, work.
• Groundwork: This update lays the foundations for future updates, so as we go along improving existing engines and adding new ones, we won’t have to do so much overhauling to get everything to work in really limited space anymore.

Still waiting for approval on our 1.2 update from Live.com Gallery, but we do host the gadget on a number of other places.

Download:

Gadget @ Live.com Gallery

Gadget @ Widgipedia.com

Gadget @ WinCustomize.com

Gadget @ BuildAGadget.com

P.S.: We’ll be re-writing the gadget manual sometime soon as much of the information has changed somewhat. Also be on the lookout for a gadget promotional site we’ll have in the works soon.

I just wanted to go ahead and post up a reply to a blog post I found from Digg the other day entitled “Widgets Suck.”  The general idea of the blog post is that widgets (gadgets probably included, though this is mostly aimed at web widgets) suck because 95% of them don’t offer additional value, the developers are mostly amateur and unemployed, and really, most of the mashup stuff just isn’t really worth it.  While I can actually agree with a few points here (I’ve seen it happen, thousands of widgets that look almost identical and do even less then what they’re supposed to), I do have an issue with the last line:

Maybe some developers really only have widget-sized ambitions.

As a developer writing what could be considered damn near a standalone application, I personally don’t think that that I have a widget sized ambition.  In fact, my ego is quite large (just ask the people I work with).  I think the shift here is going from something ultimately larger to something very small and finding ways to pack the same punch.  Widgets and gadgets are more about distribution and ease of use than stand-alone applications, which are usually about features and power.  Vista gadgets especially embody this philosophy as they are very easy to install (3-4 clicks from any download link and usually very little time to download).  There’s also mention in post that widgets are just free promotion for various sites.  This is true of most widgets and gadgets, our own included.  The trick here is be able to take an existing system (regardless of who runs it), and make it available to the user.  This is why I have a love / hate relationship with APIs.  I love that I can do just about anything I want with them, though I hate that I wasn’t the one to design them.  Then again, the world isn’t perfect and you have to take what you can get.

Gadgets are about distribution of content to the average user and the ability to relate options, power, and ease of use for any particular product by way of popular sites, APIs, and well, anything else that’s useful, to the end user.  Getting paid in this matter?  Well, I can’t say much, but think about the most commonly used sites for a little while and I’m sure you’ll figure out how it all works.

I for one, find that many gadgets really don’t work well because they don’t balance themselves out between the user and the developer.  Focus on the user and the rest of the equation will follow suit (ie. Power, Options, Interface, Monetization, Flexibility).  Of course, if developers did decide to start thinking a bit more about the end user and concentrate on making their products better as their skills increase, then I think gadgets and widgets will start to get some of the respect they deserve.

P.S.:  Sorry about the rant everyone, I just had to post something up.  I’ll come up with better content soon.

Just wanted to post up that our Ultimate Explorer gadget has finally made just over 20,000 downloads today. We’re really proud of it and we hope people continue to find it useful, especially after we roll out the 1.2 update (more on that coming early next week).

Thanks Everyone. 

Just wanted to note that the 1.2 update for the Ultimate Explorer gadget is starting construction and we’re hoping to release it by next week.  This update is going to be pretty big, so stay tuned! 

P.S.:  If you turn the script debugger on in Internet Explorer and view the current gadget and start to see errors, let us know and we’ll look into them.  We’ve received a couple of vague responses about errors, but can’t reproduce them as of yet.  Thanks.

So we’ve had some talk about certain changes to the gadget, so I’ll go ahead and start putting out a few things we’re working on for the 1.2 update.

First off, there have been a couple of suggestions for a smaller search button.  This is definitely doable as it is a little big and with certain changes in the next update I might well be making the regular search button a bit smaller to accommodate the possible addition of an options band at the bottom of the gadget for certain engines.  Yes, that’s right folks, we’ve kind of been running out of room on this things and well, it seemed obvious to use the flyouts as individual options for particular engines.  It works better and makes more sense, plus there’s more room.

I have had one request for the word search instead of a “silly icon.”  The problem with this is that I cannot change the shape of the search button unless it’s going from circle to square.  I wish I had the space for something oval in shape to accommodate, but with various configurations, the space beside the search button can be used, so I’m afraid it’s stuck at a circle.  Why not just replace the icon with text in the circle you ask?  Because that text is going to be wicked tiny.  I’d rather have a big icon that 90% of the people using will be able to understand (and the other 10% of the users can either guess or frantically click to find out that there is a search button after all).  Beyond the obvious use as an icon, it also balances out the design a bit more than regular text.  The exception to the rule is the Digg button, but that is also shorter text, so it can be bigger. 

I would like to announce that we will be adding more engines to the gadget, so this next update will be “laying the groundwork” so to speak for future updates to come.  The general idea is to add in as much usefulness as possible, so don’t be surprised if this thing has around 20 engines before we’re done.

In terms of upcoming engines, I will say that we are planning to add something to cover the weather, date, and time.  I know, not a search engine, but still useful within the context of the gadget, especially since it can then be used in place of two or three other gadgets in a pinch.  The other engine I’ll announce later on as we get closer to the update.

There will be the usual smaller bug fixes and tweaks, but expect big changes in the settings panel, flyouts, new engines, and smaller interface tweaks as we get closer to the next update in a couple weeks (at least, that’s what we’re projecting).