Xbox Live Friends Sidebar Gadget 1.1
I said I was working on it this morning, and I wasn’t even lying! I’ve just updated the Xbox Live Friends Gadget to version 1.1 which brings with it almost everything I promised in the previous post!
New Stuff!
I’ve created an actual landing page for the gadget, http://patcavit.com/xbox-live-gadget/. There’s also a page helping people copy gadgets from their old install to a new one, http://patcavit.com/xbox-live-gadget/how-to-update/. Both of these pages need a lot of work but it’s a start. Had to learn a lot of wordpress knowledge I had long forgotten to be able to do that stuff!
So here’s what did end up making the cut for 1.1
- The backend web service caches results now, makes updating faster (but the data is no less fresh!)
- Expanding in height was retarded, the guidelines were correct. To solve the problem of more than 5 online contacts without expanding there’s now pagination!
- Undocked state exists now, might even be marginally useful.
- Flyout has a link to open up xbox.com to send user a message over XBL
- Error Handling for bad data from the WS
- New background images, no longer quite so boring!
- List updates are animated with a subtle fade effect. Probably needs more tweaking, but I think it makes a big difference.
- Checks to make sure you have the latest version of the gadget and will nag you if not
- (Online) Instructions for updating the gadget to save you from having to retype your friends list
- (Online) Actual web page for the gadget to provide some useful info
Unfortunately showing offline contacts didn’t make it. That task is quite a bit bigger than I originally though, but may still be coming down the pipe in a future update. There’s already a list of things I’m going to be working on next, so here’s a peek
- Show total count of online friends somewhere
- Flyout wonkiness
- Make flyout more useful (it’s getting there slowly!)
- List update fades interfere with the hover effect. This will be amusing to fix, I just know it.
So there’s still plenty for me to do and that was just after having one other person look at this. I’d love to get some feedback so I could keep working on this. After really getting into it I’m having a blast working with gadgets.
And now, pictures!
April 19th, 2008
Got the update. Thanks again. =)
May 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
This is probably the best friends gadget out there. I had the adam Kiney one, but took that off with the lack of opacity and limited friends, it wasn’t good enough, so i took it off.
If you can hook this thing up to work with iGoogle I will love you forever! But I guess that won’t happen with you being an engineer with Yahoo! lol
June 19th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
… but I guess with them using YUI you could do it to prove a point or something….
June 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I don’t mind if someone converts it to an iGoogle gadget, I just don’t use a customizable homepage and thus don’t have much use for that. It’d be a neat experiment though, the code would have to change quite a bit I’d imagine.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Cool, well there’s a challenge for someone! I just want to be able to see who is playing online while I’m at work so I can torture myself.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:13 am
this blows, one when i add people it doesnt pu them on the list unless their online, two wtf man need to make it bigger, 3 why cant it show my friends with out me putting them in if its linked to xbox.com make it so i have to sign in and load my friends cos thsi sucks compaed to this basic one iv got its not fro the sidebar but its good, take my advice, then you will get more downloads, the style is fine
August 4th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
It can’t get your friends list from xbox.com because MS never made a way to access that info. Other apps can have you login to xbox.com and then use your cookies to get that info. Gadgets can’t do that very easily.
It’s as tall as I felt I could make it without it taking up too much space on the sidebar. You could always drag it off if you wanted it bigger. Unfortunately the way gadgets work with transparent backgrounds to make it taller you have to make a new background image. That gets annoying really fast.
I contemplated a “show my offline” friends toggle in the gadget config. Next time I’m feeling programmy I can add that. It’s not a feature I’d use but it would be easy enough to do.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm