iGoogle was enhanced on Thursday in order to provide a better experience for all U.S. users, and a better platform for publishers and developers. Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance were all improved. These gadgets can now make use of iGoogle's canvas feature, which allows a gadget to take up the whole screen. "Canvas view allows developers to deliver richer content, games, and UI to users on iGoogle as well as the opportunity to monetize," said Google engineer Jake Quist. This is especially useful for the Google Reader and Gmail gadgets, which now bring almost all of the features of the actual services to iGoogle.

"Any gadget on your page can now maximize to full-screen real estate," explained Jessica Ewing, iGoogle's senior product manager. "Now we have full, rich applications in iGoogle." To make things clearer here’s an example: Gmail users can now access Gmail from their iGoogle page. Previously, the iGoogle Gmail Gadget provided a preview, but not complete application access.

iGoogle’s interface was also updated. In other words the new view places the tabs that you typically see at the top, under the search box, now on the left hand side. It then allows you to add gadgets that support canvas view, to the new iGoogle look, which gives some gadgets a higher usability factor.

The new iGoogle also moves user navigation from tabs at the top of the page to a bar down the left side. This enables more pages and elements in the navigation, therefore making the search faster and more efficient.

iGoogle widgets are written in the Open Social platform, so applications created for social networks should run on the new portal page, and the other way around.
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