By Jesse
Shieh, Software EngineerRecently, on a trip to Shanghai,
I snapped a bunch of incredible street photos for my friends and family back home. When I
logged into my iGoogle page and was greeted by my iGoogle theme, I suddenly wished I could
create my own theme out of my Shanghai pictures and share it with my friends - wouldn't that
be a great way to personalize iGoogle even further? It turns out that many of you have been
asking for this feature for a while too, and we've listened to your requests. I'm excited to
announce that after today's launch of the iGoogle Themes API, we can all get started on making
and sharing our own themes.
Creating your own theme isn't rocket
science. If you can create a webpage, then you can create a theme. There are only three steps
involved: designing images for the header and footer, entering metadata and color information
in an XML file, and submitting the theme. To find out more about the API, start with the
developer guide. You can also take a look at the terrific example
themes (shown below) built by designers Yves Behar, Mark Frauenfelder, Troy Lee, and John
Maeda that showcase different parts of the API. These themes, along with themes you submit,
will be available in the new themes directory for the millions of iGoogle users. So
try it out
and let us know
what you think!
Earth-light
by
Yves Behar, founder of the San Francisco design studio
fuseproject:
Adventures in Lollipopland by
Mark Frauenfelder,
writer, illustrator, co-founder of Boing Boing, and editor-in-chief of Make Magazine:
Supermoto Mayhem by
Troy
Lee, designer and founder of Troy Lee Designs:
Simplicity is Complex by
John
Maeda, graphic designer, artist, Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media
Laboratory, and recently named as the next President of the Rhode Island School of Design
(RISD):
