Google's gadgets rose in popularity since the Mountain View company started a powerful campaign to promote it and some of the users became real fans of them. Because they are able to work with Google Desktop or iGoogle, the gadgets target a large segment of consumers who are already registered for these technologies. As I'm sure many of you would like to build their own gadgets, let me introduce Gadget Designer 1.1, Google's latest attempt to allow the users to design the add-ons. The previous releases were not compatible with Google Desktop 5.5 so if you want more power and functions, you have to download this latest version.

Among the new features, I can mention the autogenerated onclick functions, the autogenerated even-handler functions as well as several options for viewing source code. Obviously, you have to be a little bit code-savvy in order to use Gadget Designer because it requires you to write and edit the gadget's source codes.

"We just released Gadget Designer 1.1, so be sure to grab the latest SDK and try it out. This version of the Gadget Designer brings new features, stability improvements, and support for the new 5.5 API", James Yum, Developer Programs Engineer Google Desktop Team, wrote on the main Google Code blog.

"As you might have noticed already, the old Gadget Designer is incompatible with Google Desktop 5.5, so you will need the new Designer if you're running the latest version of Google Desktop. If you're still running an older version of Google Desktop, you'll need to use the old Designer. The October 16 version of the SDK includes both the new and the old versions of the Designer."

If you'd like to try the new Gadget Designer, click on this link to access the official page. Also, the release notes are available here.