The main thing I like about iGoogle is that it lets me easily view at one time the basic info from various sites I already enjoy without all the extra time needed for the loading of useless frills (animations, videos, ads, massive images) when visiting those sites directly, i.e. one URL at a time. That is particularly useful for old-fashioned dialup users like me because it lets me consolidate a lot of info from numerous sites all in one place. If I see anything of particular interest in the feeds, then I can always click to go directly to the target page with only that one item. (Actually, I usually right-click and choose "Open in New Window" so that my first window can stay fixed on my iGoogle page in case there is other stuff I will want to examine.)
Click the thumbnail above to display a screen capture image of my iGoogle page showing my "Steely Dan" tab.
I recently did some reorganizing of all my various iGoogle tabs and in doing so I accidentally stumbled across a couple neat iGoogle tricks, the first one being this generally available "compound gadget". It's a nifty little thing which lets you collect two or more gadgets on an iGoogle tab into one single gadget equipped with its own tabs to switch among those gadgets now sub-grouped together.
Initially I didn't think the compound gadget was all that interesting. In fact I thought it just made iGoogle life more complicated by adding another layer of tabs. However, I soon realized that it sometimes makes sense to group somewhat related iGoogle items together due to some close relationship. For instance, on my screen shot you will note that there are boxes for "Angel's Blog" and "DimSkip's Blog" (i.e. what you're reading now).
You may also notice two tabs in each box for those blogs as well. What I did was set up the first tab in each blog's box to display post feeds. That way I can instantly see a new post on either blog as it shows up in the corresponding blog feed. The second tab for each blog, though identically titled, actually shows the comment feed. This way I can also easily check to see if anyone leaves an interesting comment to a post on those blogs.
Now obviously since I control the horizontal and the vertical on this particular blog, having an iGoogle display of posts and comments from here may seem redundant. However, I just like to keep it there as a kind of double check to make sure my post and comment feeds continue working properly. In theory I could also turn off my blogger option which is set to email me when anyone leaves a comment and just rely on checking my iGoogle box for any new comments left. But I'll probably just leave my comment notification setting to email me—again, just as a safeguard in case my comment feed stops working for any reason.
On my news tabs I likewise collect Google, AP, and Reuters news each into sub-categories of headlines, U.S., and world. (I also have a box for a UPI news feed, but their general news only seems to be available as top stories, guess since by definition it's "United Press International.") On my "Science & Tech" tab I compound the AP, Reuters, and UPI science news feeds together as well as the AP, Reuters, and Google tech news feeds. There are a few other things I compounded together here and there as well, but you probably get the idea by now without me droning on listing each compound gadget instance.
A second neat little iGoogle trick I only just discovered is that you can edit each iGoogle tab to alter how it displays. You can show the info on a tab in one, two, three, or four columns. The two- and three-column display formats also allow preset differing column widths, which sometimes comes in handy.
And finally it's not really an iGoogle trick per se, I just like the way it looks (as you may have noticed on that screen shot capture)...
I added some special characters to my iGoogle tab names which I think enhance the display. I use "►" and "◄" to denote the first and last tabs of news and comics. I also threw a couple musical notes on my "♪ Steely Dan ♫" tab and a sunshine symbol on my "☼ Weather" tab. The "● Main ●" tab is now set off by round bullets, the "¿ Test ?" tab by the inverted/regular question marks, and the "[ Hold ]" tab by square brackets. (The "¿ Test ?" tab is for testing newly discovered gadgets and feed displays and the "[ Hold ]" tab is a bin for useful gadgets and feeds which maybe are having difficulty or perhaps are seasonal, like MLB scores and standings.) I just couldn't find any special characters of particularly obvious significance for the other tab names so they still look kind of blah. Oh well.
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