Preparing for Ginger (part 2)
Most of you must have received an invitation code to the Ginger beta now, wether thanks to your Ecosystem widget submission, or through any other general codes that could be found on various website in the past few weeks.
Finding the UWA Test module
Using the UWA Test module to test how a widget is doing has long been the staple of UWA development - and a recommended step before submitting anything to Ecosystem (you never submit anything that doesn’t work in Netvibes, right ? Right ?)
In Coriander (the previous version of Netvibes), the UWA Test module was located in the sidebar, in the “External widgets” section - but you knew that, of course, since you always test your widget before submitting to Ecosystem 
Well, as you might know by now, Ginger doesn’t have a sidebar anymore, but a top-bar instead, with added functionalities. Users can now search Ecosystem directly from their Netvibes page, have access to a Toolbox (the essential widgets), can browse Ecosystem’s categories, and quickly add a feed to their page/universe.
Where did we stick that UWA Test widget, then? Right in the Toolbox, on the second page (first for universes). You’ll find it easily thanks to its orange logo. How it is used is then up to you: you can click it to open that widget without installing it, or you can drag it to your page and enjoy your widget (your could also drag it to your universe en have your visitors enjoy it).
Understanding the error messages
The less lucky among you might have noticed that some badly coded that would previously not display anything, now display a full set of inline error messages.
Here’s how the error would like if you used (or didn’t properly escape) a “&” in your HTML code:
…and here’s how it would react to one too-many quotation mark:
These new message can therefore help you pinpoint the specific location of a mistake in the well-formedness of your XML/HTML code. If the error message is not clear enough, just understand that getting such error messages means that you should proofread your XHTML code.
MiniAPI modules and Netvibes Universes
Finally, it’s already been said in the first part of this series, but it bears repeating: you should really convert your MiniAPI module(s) to UWA widget(s).
And we have one more reason for this: Universes have been designed not to accept MiniAPI modules, for numerous reasons. We all know that once Ginger is out, users are going to rush for creating the coolest Universe they can - and they’ll need cool widget for that. If you deem your MiniAPI cool, and feel it has its place on people’s public pages, then you owe it to yourself to switch it to UWA. Dive into the “Converting a MiniAPI module to a UWA widget” series right now!
There you go, a couple more things to check out when you are a developer switching from Coriander to Ginger.
Final note: if you still find yourself invitation-less, try this code: DEVNET50.
netvibes
February 19th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
How to integrate an Google Map?
On your miniAPI, the map is displayed from an iFrame… But I suppose it’s not good for an UWA widget.
What’s your advice?
February 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Well, on the contrary, it’s still the recommended way - because of GMaps API’s domain limitation, you can’t really do anything else than hosting the map on your site, and displaying that page in the widget through an API.
For instance, check out how this widget does it.