There are over 850 items on the Windows Live Gallery! Kudos to all of you who have contributed items. Below are some helpful tips on getting your item through the acceptance process:

• Everything on Windows Live Gallery needs to comply with our Terms of Use. It is a good idea to check it out it before you submit.
• Web gadgets must contain only relative references to files that are packaged in the same zip file.
• A neatly packaged .zip file of all of the Web Gadget files is a must
• All items must install and de-install properly.

We hope these tips make the acceptance process go smoothly and as always, send us feedback. Please keep uploading new, cool, interesting items; this really helps Gallery deliver a great experience for all our users.

Kevin Liang – Program Manager

Today, we launched Windows Live Gallery in beta in 21 markets and 15 languages. In addition we've also added support for Windows Live Writer plug-ins and Windows SideShow (available on certain Vista capable laptops). Plus, there are a few things we've updated to improve the overall Gallery experience based on your feedback!

With this release Gallery is available in 21 markets and 15 languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese. Here's more info on the new types of content available on the site:

• Writer Plug-ins
  Windows Live Writer is a desktop app that makes it easier to create cool, rich blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or another blog service. Seamlessly insert rich content like pictures and maps and enjoy rich WYSIWYG editing in the style of your blog to see exactly what your posts will look like before you publish. With the Writer SDK, you can create extensions and plugins to insert  cool content. Try out these Writer extensions and plug-ins: Firefox 'Blog This' Extension, IE 'Blog This' Extension and Event Plugin available on Gallery.
• SideShow Gadgets
  Windows SideShow is a platform in Windows Vista that enables you to run gadgets that receive data to secondary displays like cell phones, laptop lid displays etc. If you are interested in creating your own Windows SideShow gadgets take a look at the SideShow SDK or an overview of SideShow.

Have a Windows SideShow compatible PC? Check out the new Picture Viewer (beta) available on Gallery.

Hope you enjoy your experience with the Windows Live Gallery as we continue to make improvements. Please keep the feedback coming! 

Junaid Basir - Program Manager

As you've probably noticed, a bunch of the Gallery's Gadgets have two buttons on them “Add to Live.com” or “Add to Spaces.” We added this functionality a few weeks ago in sync with the latest release of Windows Live Spaces to enable you to easily choose web gadgets from Gallery to customize your space. Since then, there are a few cool web gadget examples we’ve noticed on the Gallery site from our community – here are a few:

1. iTunes Songs – created by LiveGadgets – has already had over 30,000 downloads!
2. Hangman – created by ToddOS1
3. Simple Calendar for Spaces – created by JeffreyZhao_Fool
4. Cool Pictures from Windows Live Spaces – created by DarefromMicrosoft

The Spacecraft, the Spaces team blog, has a great overview on creating cool web gadgets to run on both Spaces & Live.com, here’s a snippet:

“Remember that the Live.com portal is about YOU catching up on the world.   Spaces is about the world (however big or small you define it with the permissions you set) catching up on YOU.  Users will decide which gadgets are worthy of adding to their space or not, and given our experience with Spaces features to date, the ones that will be the most successful will be:

Customizable -- let the space author personalize the gadget so their instance of it is different than another Spaces user's instance.  This could be as simple as letting the space author select the city they want to show weather for OR as complicated as pulling the user's account data in from another service (ie, his/her Netflix queue). 

Reflective of the author's personality -- a gadget that helps the author to be creative with little or no work is more relevant than one that lets a visitor come to a space and check their mail account or convert their currency.  All of those gadgets are killer apps; it's just the ones that are more like sharing your photos or music tastes will probably be more popular. 

Adaptive to our rich themes/layouts -- after adding your gadget to your own space for testing, try selecting a bunch of dark and light themes AND moving the gadget between our narrowest and widest columns to make sure it works well in all scenarios.  You want that puppy to shine!”

Wanna create your own? Here’s how to get started: 

1. Build a Windows Live web gadget according to the SDK available at the Windows Live Dev site. Don't forget to take a look at the Spacecraft post for the 411 on optimizing your gadget for Spaces (author mode for personalized settings).
2. Zip up your manifest file and supporting Javascript/CSS files and submit that gadget package to the Windows Live Gallery so other Spaces visitors can add it to their space by going to Customize --> Modules --> "Add gadgets from Windows Live Gallery".  Once it has been verified to work in each service (we will do this step as part of the check in process), it will appear in the Gallery for users to add to Live.com or Spaces.  Make sure you use relative URLs (mygadget.css instead of http://foogadgetdeveloper.com/mygadget.css) in your manifest XML to point to the scripts/CSS or the gadget will be rejected during verification.    
3. If you tricked out your space with Gadgets or come across a cool space with Gadgets drop us a line by commenting on this post, or you can send mail to spgadget@microsoft.com. Same thing applies if you have feedback or feature requests for making gadget development for Spaces better.

We'll be updating the Gadgets SDK and sample code on http://dev.live.com soon to reflect the additional Spaces info. For more info on the new features available on Windows Live Spaces, check out the video with Mike Torres, the Lead Program Manager on Windows Live Spaces, or visit http://discoverspaces.live.com for a tour.

Heather – Lead Product Planner