Editors for Creating iGoogle Themes

igThemer is a simple way to create iGoogle themes. This week, Google released an API for creating themes, but if you don't want to read the documentation and create the theme files, igThemer lets you select the colors and the necessary images, while previewing the theme on the same page.

igThemer doesn't let you create themes with multiple scenes, but it hosts your theme so you can share it with your friends or submit it to iGoogle's directory. Regardless of the way you create a theme, an easy way to preview it is to use this URL:

http://www.google.com/ig?skin=SKIN_URL
(replace SKIN_URL with the location of your theme's XML file)



An even cooler solution lets you edit the theme directly in iGoogle and see the changes in real-time. Just go to iGoogle, copy the code below and paste it in the address bar (you could also bookmark the script):

javascript:var s=document.createElement('script');s.id="igteid"; s.type="text/javascript";s.src= "http://igoogle-theme-editor.googlecode.com/svn/" +"trunk/iGoogleThemeEditor/dist/ige.js?lang=en&" +new Date().getTime(); document.body.appendChild(s);void(0);


{ The first screenshot is based on the photo Colourful life, licensed as Creative Commons by BlueSunFlower. }

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iGoogle for iPhone

Google created a version of iGoogle optimized for iPhone, that displays all the gadgets and feeds from tab in a single column. To switch to another tab, choose a name from the drop-down displayed at the bottom of the page.

The iPhone interface has a public URL: http://google.com/ig/i, but iPhone users will be automatically redirected to this URL.



The standard mobile version of iGoogle available at http://google.com/m is much more limited: it only displays feeds and a very small number of gadgets, you need to manually add items to your page and you can't change the number of items displayed from a feed. Another limitation is that it only works in the US.


{ via Blogoscoped Forum. The image doesn't show a real iPhone. }

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