In this walk through, we'll create an area weather widget to appear in your My Widgets sidebar panel in Lotus Notes. This Google Gadget® widget will serve as an alternative to a desktop shortcut or browser bookmark with the added benefit of acting on both recognized text (Live Text) or selected text in the active document. This widget will act on a recognized address zip code pattern to display that area's weather.

Note: Widgets are designed to let you easily extend Notes using a simple wizard. Click the Getting Started with Widgets toolbar option , to see an overview of the types of widgets you can create. Once you become familiar with widgets you will find the most intuitive way to create them is with the Add to Sidebar and Configure a Widget from Current Context options.

 

1. Make sure that your My Widgets sidebar panel and toolbar buttons are visible.

If they are not visible, click File > Preferences > Widgets, enable the Show Widget Toolbar and My Widgets Sidebar panel, and click OK.

2. Enable the Notes embedded browser by clicking File > Preferences > Web Browser, enabling the Use the browser embedded in this client, and clicking OK.


3. In the Notes client embedded browser address bar, paste the http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&hl=en&gl=en&url=http://www.notkewl.com/myWeather/myWeather.xml URL.

We'll use this Google Gadget for the widget.

OK, we have the correct open context and can now create the widget.

 

Note: There are many ways to navigate to public Google Gadgets; for example, open to the http://www.google.com site and search on the term Google Gadgets Weather to see additional weather gadgets. Note that the Google Gadget widget creation wizard is designed to work with "Google Gadgets for your Webpage"items; use the Web page widget creation wizard for any "Google Desktop Gadgets" items.

 

Note: Not all weather gadgets enable you to wire an action, which is a needed step for associating a widget action with a selected or Live Text zip code pattern. You may need to look through several before finding one that is configurable.

 

5. With the above Weather gadget page open, click the Configure a widget option from the Notes top bar .

 

6. There are several options available, we'll keep it simple and just enable Google Gadget; Add a Google Gadget and click Next.

7. On the Terms of service page, click Next.

 

8. Keep the widget name (theWeather) as is or change it but enable the Wire as an action option and click Next.

9. With Address specified as the recognized content type, wire the address.zip content type property to the Zip/ Location Code widget property. Optionally specify the results of the action to appear in a New Window and then click Finish.

10. The widget appears in the My Widgets sidebar panel.



11. To test the widget, send yourself an email containing a properly expressed address -- for example 38 Merrimac Street, Newburyport, MA 01950. Open the email but do not enter Edit mode. The address should be highlighted similar to the following:


Note: Use the File > Preferences > Live Text page to ensure that Live Text highlighting is enabled.

12. Single-click the Live Text address in the email document, select the widget name if prompted, and the widget displays the weather information for that address, similar to the following:

13. You can share the widget with others by right-clicking and selecting Email To. You can also make the widget centrally available to others by right-clicking and selecting Publish to Catalog.

How to Learn More:

To learn more about creating and using widgets from an app dev or end-user viewpoint, see the Widgets and Live Text section of Notes help.

To learn more about configuring and enabling Widgets and Live Text for app devs and end-users, as well as creating the widgets catalog itself, see the Configuring Widgets and Live Text section of Domino Admin help.

There are also many Widgets and Live Text posts in the Notes and Domino wiki as well as Lotus Notes and Domino Support available through Search.

Many community-generated widgets are available publically in the IBM Lotus Greenhouse catalog.