DISQUS

Chris Sansbury · 3 years ago

What a great idea! Simplicity itself.

Jonathan Riley · 3 years ago

That's great! I love it!

Mattyv · 3 years ago

you go girl!

Tushar Joshi · 3 years ago

Great Idea Erica. Now I also have this side bar on my Firefox browser. Thanks for sharing the tip.


Tushar

Sridhar · 3 years ago

Can you pls tell me the name of the Firefox theme in use in the screenshot?

ffoxer · 3 years ago

great tip

Joël Kuiper · 3 years ago

Shamefully they janked out the sidebar in the 3.0 development builds.
No worries they'll add it back before the 3.0 release somewhere in 2007, but as a nightly tester: no neat tricks for me :p

Francis Siefken · 3 years ago

Great alternative for the sidebar. Now I can see digg boing slash gmail and gcal all at once. Muliplatform, less system load. Thanks.

Robin Card · 3 years ago

"Can you pls tell me the name of the Firefox theme in use in the screenshot?"


it's the default theme...

Eric · 3 years ago

Great job!

Ivan Minic · 3 years ago

Wow... Brilliant!

jason · 3 years ago

Thanks for the wonderful tip, Erica. You rock!

charliedigital · 3 years ago

good stuff, ran into this item via digg.


*subscribes to blog*

Jason · 3 years ago

Excellent tip! Thanks for sharing.

dep · 3 years ago

This also works great with pageflakes.com -- Thanks!!!

Dan · 3 years ago

@Sridhar:


Thats the default theme for FireFox on Mac OSX.



and great tip!

Charles · 3 years ago

Thanks Erica for taking the time to help us out.

Ryan · 3 years ago

girl geeks are cool....'grats on gettin' dugg!
just realized you work at google...so you're a genius too

Thejesh GN · 3 years ago

Good idea. Its really helpful.
Thanks,

Thejesh

Yang · 3 years ago

This is good idea, I don't know if I'll use it much, but good nonetheless. Maybe the next step is to use Greasemonkey to change the layout of the Google page so that images and text aren't cropped.

Pyrolyte · 3 years ago

excellent.

Michael P · 3 years ago

Excellent tip! Very creative, Erica!

Oliver · 3 years ago

Very nice idea :)

Keith · 3 years ago

Nice tip, Erica! Congrats on your 50th post, and got your post dugg. Has this been a software, I would write about it on SoftSift. Great work!

teddy · 3 years ago

That's great! Good idea!

Charles D. · 3 years ago

You know I had seen that 'open in sidebar' feature before in the all-in-one sidebar extension. (It's implemented quite simply as an 'open this website in sidebar' icon so it gives you another approach to getting to a setup like yours.)


However, I didn't see any application for such a feature. I would have had to resize the sidebar to see any normal website that I opened up, so where's the feature in that, i thought. So I couldn't figure out why I would want to use such a feature.



But putting all the key content in the first column makes everything work together quite smoothly. done! works.



Pretty interesting that such an obviously effective setup was overlooked by so many.

A keen eye, that you have.

Thanks.

morpheeze · 3 years ago

Brilliant Idea!
Thanks and here are some virtual falling balloons and cupcakes *throw*



KR morpheeze

Scott · 3 years ago

Thanks for the tip!


Do you know of a way to reduce the size of the Google logo and search box? All of my gadgets fit nicely in the sidebar except the one I use most - Google search!



Scott

Soyapi · 3 years ago

Thanks for the tip, Erica.


I'm now using Linux full time at work and I missed my GDS gadgets.

farmhead · 3 years ago

You rule. Thanks for the tip.

Dustin · 3 years ago

This is pretty cool. Ill try it the rest of the day to see how I like it.

ed · 3 years ago

Thanks for the IDEA!!!

rapture · 3 years ago

Good idea, but wouldn't it be better to use the Google IG Mobile version instead of the standard version?


http://www.google.com/ig/mobile

Jimmy · 3 years ago

Your mouth is massive

Markus · 3 years ago

Google sometimes tries a bit to hard, thats what I believe

Nick Schmidt · 3 years ago

Why couldn't you use google desktop?? I thought it was comptable with Mac & Linux...


Nick Schmidt

jun · 3 years ago

nice

Neil · 3 years ago

nice little trick there!


[Lowload.co.uk] - UK Dedicated Servers

drkN · 3 years ago

The same can be done with Opera.


Expand the panel bar, (view -> toolbars -> panels), do the same thing with your gadgets on the left side, then drag the tab into the panels bar. then, click it to get this function.



Note: Theres probably a nice opera widget to do this while looking nicer anyway.

Lazlonger · 3 years ago

Thanks for the trick. Got it from Digg. I use the homepeage all the time and sometimes I just like a change. I'll put it in the sidebar for a while and see how I like it.
Oh Joy!

sam · 3 years ago

You can use this URL to point directly on the first widget of the page..


http://www.google.com/ig#c_1

PictureRipper · 3 years ago

Thanks for the sharing this yet another google toy with us,
used your trick to add it to Opera Panel (yep, I am an Opera 9 fan :)

Jack Lund · 3 years ago

Very cool! Thanks!

Donovan.UK · 3 years ago

Love it. Simple, useful, delightful. So obvious, but only when you think of it. Thanks for thinking of it.

JPow · 3 years ago

This is a beautiful thing! Thanks!

ML · 3 years ago

Thanks alotz buddy ... great tips ;)


ML

gus · 3 years ago

rather just have it open in a tab.

Jaime · 3 years ago

great idea, a lot more accesible
saludos

Yakito · 3 years ago

great , great, great , great , great !!

Pallab De · 3 years ago

Just a clarification :
This can be done on Opera also.



1) If you don't already have it, install Opera.

2) Using Opera, browse to http://www.google.com/ig

3) Line up all your Gadgets on the left, putting the ones you'll use most at the top.

4) Press Ctrl + D and add it as a bookmark. While saving the bookmark make sure that the “Show in Panel” option is ticked.

Screenshot

5). That’s it! Now the panel will appear in your opera sidebar. Just click on the icon to open that panel.

helmi · 3 years ago

Cool! nice little tric

Kruykaze · 3 years ago

ALSO remember to check "remember last opened site" IMPORTANT!!

jillian · 3 years ago

Wow! Brilliant hack! Thank you so much.

Hansel · 3 years ago

Nice and easy. Great tip and I am using it now.

daedal · 3 years ago

Nice idea. I'll definitly give this one a shot and see how it works out for me.

Hashim · 3 years ago

nice and simple! Good stuff.


I just subscribed too.

PHil · 3 years ago

Cool idea

Prashant · 3 years ago

Thanks Erica. I am putting this in my blog.

肥熊李 · 3 years ago

cool! Cross the OS barrier ;-)
我可以完全转移到Linux下工作了,

看来生活不缺少美和智慧,缺少的是发现美和智慧的眼睛.

jason · 3 years ago

Cool!! YES!


I can see a "To Do" in the screenshot... how can I get one?

Thanks!

Jill · 3 years ago

Great idea!

EricaJoy · 3 years ago

Yang - I thought about trying my hand at a Greasemonkey script...maybe one day.


Rapture - Mobile would be perfect if it displayed all your gadgets without having to click More.



Jimmy - i kinda like it that way so danke for the compliment. :)



Nick Schmidt - Point me to where I can download a Mac\Linux version of Google Desktop. ;)



sam - nicely done!



PictureRipper\drkN\Pallab De - Rock on with your Opera selves...I likesa my Firefox but woot if you can do this in Opera too.

Jake · 3 years ago

Mine is still dividing into three columns. How can I fix that?

Frank · 3 years ago

Very nice hack !!!


Thanks Erica !!!

turo · 3 years ago

Awesome!
I thought you've created a new plugin or something like this, but this is much better and simple ^_^ !!



Thanks!

Fordi · 3 years ago

Avoid having to line stuff up:
http://www.google.com/ig/mobile?output=pda&hl;=en

Will give you a single-column javascriptless optimized version of your page. Sure, it's less functional, but you can reserve a bookmark to use your fully-functional page anyway. Meanwhile, you have your feeds, weather, email and calendar in one easy to get at place.

sebdotv · 3 years ago

Thanks for the trick, I love it!


Maybe the next step is to use Greasemonkey to change the layout of the Google page so that images and text aren't cropped.



I had the same idea, but unfortunately user scripts are not run on sidebar: greasemonkey bug #9651

kshery · 3 years ago

To Jason:


You can get a ToDo by opening your Google Homepage, click on: Add Content, located in the upper right corner. A new tab/window will open. ToDo is located in the Tools section. Have fun looking!

john · 3 years ago

thanks erica!!!

Karthik · 3 years ago

Nice Idea I 'll Check it Out..

Ian · 3 years ago

Did this stop working today, or is it just me? As of today, my sidebar content is squeezed over to the left 1/3 of the window.


I also notice that if you open google.com/ig in the main window, the column now automatically resizes to 1/3 of the window as you change the window size. I'm pretty sure that it used to be a fixed width column.



Is this feature now broken?

queenkv · 3 years ago

Hey Ian,


I'm having the same problem....is this permanent for google/ig?



queenkv

Sean Wilson · 3 years ago

It's not just you. My google is also doing the same thing. The sidebar content is squeezed over and I am not sure if it is a Firefox upgrade issue or if Google has changed the way the homepage is displayed

Dave · 3 years ago

Same problem for me! :(

Anand · 3 years ago

I am also having the problem of squeezed. Is this trick short lived? I wil have to go back to google desktop now for consolidated plugins.

EricaJoy · 3 years ago

Heya folks,


I'm having the same problems. Let me ask around and see what I can find out...I'll keep you posted.



-EJ

sebdotv · 3 years ago

Hi,


Thanks for the great tip Erica.

I made a quick Firefox extension to fix the problem with the squeezed column - which I'm not sure if it was due to a Google change or to Firefox 1.5.0.6.



Anyway, this extension brings our beloved IG-in-sidebar back and also features an improved layout.



More information available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3130/



sebdotv

Aannd · 3 years ago

Great the plugin works like a charm. Thanks Sebdotv!

Anand · 3 years ago

Spoke too early, even though the plugin works for squeeze part but on clicking a link it tries to open the page on the sidebar itself :( for example digg. So I am still looking for the plain old setup.

Dave · 3 years ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3130/
</b... now links work perfectly!!



Great!

Mona N. · 2 months ago

COMMENT!