Last week, I got an email from Google and was asked to test their new Google Driving Directions gadget on our newly re-design web site. If we like it and decide to use it on our web site, then they will mention our website as the feature user in this new gadget public release next month.
I went to their new gadget creator web site (link here), and found there are two basic setting categories. One for the Display setting, and the other is the Gadget Setting.
In the Display setting, you can define the Title, Width, Height and Border color of the gadget which will show on your website. And the Gadget setting can allow you to enter the street address of yours which can be used as the default destination of the driving directions. You can enter more than one address for your website, just use pipeline | to separate addresses in Gadget settings.
After you set up these settings, you can preview the changes, or Get the Javascript code and paste on your website.
What is the advantage? Well, you can use Google Maps to do the same thing, but this new Driving Direction Gadget can allow your web visitors still stay on your web site and get the driving directions.
The following is the screen shot of gadget:
Updated: now you can check more information about it on Google Map’s official blog at http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/12/gift-of-gadgets.html
Nice and very good info … thanks a lot
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hi..i did try the gadget.. but i dunno why when i put it in my website after entering the address…the frame wont automatically follow the height of the information..no scrollbar as well
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Thank you very much for your help, this has been a great relief from the books,
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Did anyone ever figure out why the scrollbar doesn’t show up sometimes? It’s happening with my site
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Does anyone know how to get rid of the default Googleplex? I apply these changes on the gadget page and preview them, the code looks fine, and then on my site Googlplex is the only option that shows up.
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I pasted the script in a tag. For some reason, I see that the tag, containing the map and directions gets generated. Yet, I don’t see the map and the directions once I click Go.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
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I also added the gadget to my site. But is there any way to have the source xml file in my server and give url?
It failed when i tried. Can any of you give me the correct format to give xml source?
thanks a lot
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