The SWF exports of presentations in the Google Documents

Google announcing the deprecation of SWF export functionality for presentations from the Google Documents List API. They are taking this action due to the limited demand for this feature, and in order to focus engineering efforts on other aspects of the API.

Clients currently making the following request to the API are affected by this change.

https://docs.google.com/feeds/download/presentations/Export?docID=1234&exportFormat=swf

We recommend clients currently using SWF exports switch to PDF exports, using the appropriate exportFormat value.

https://docs.google.com/feeds/download/presentations/Export?docID=1234&exportFormat=pdf

They are disabling SWF exports in the coming weeks. Clients attempting to export presentations as SWF after the exports are disabled will receive an HTTP 400 response.

For more information on exporting presentations, see the Google Documents List API documentation. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the forums.

Mapplets to transition out of Google Maps

Earlier this year we announced the deprecation of Google Mapplets. As part of the deprecation plan for Mapplets we will shortly be switching from rendering Mapplets within Google Maps, to rendering them on a dedicated Mapplets page:

http://maps.google.com/maps/mapplets?moduleurl=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/geoscratchpad.xml

In conjunction with this transition the Google Maps Directory will be closed, and links to Mapplets will be removed from the My Maps tab in Google Maps.

Bookmarks for existing Mapplets will continue to work. They will be automatically redirected to the new Mapplets page for the relevant Mapplet. The Mapplets page also has the minimum necessary UI elements so that it is better suited to embedding in third party sites using an iframe.

However because the Mapplets page is not part of the Google Maps application, Mapplets will no longer have access to Google Maps user profiles, which means that User Preferences will no longer be stored between sessions. Users accessing Mapplets will now always see the default behaviour when the Mapplet first loads.

The above changes will be made on or shortly after Wednesday December 8th 2010. If your web site recommends one or more Mapplets by linking to the Directory we recommend that you update your site to link directly to the Mapplets page, or embed the relevant Mapplets page in your site, as soon as possible.

Posted by Thor Mitchell, Google Maps API Product Manager