Today I have released version 1.1.0 of the G+7 Windows desktop gadget.The original plan for this release was to add the +1 button to every message, so that you could quickly +1 a post without having to open it in the browser. Unfortunately, the reality proved to be more complicated than my hopes. It seems like the button, while working fine for web pages (like this one), does not really behave properly for posts on Google+ itself. It does render the number of +1s correctly, however clicking on it, and passing the post's URL as the href parameter (which is an URL like this one) does not increase +1 count on the post page. I am not exactly sure what clicking on the button actually does, but it is not what one would expect.
So, instead, I have provided just a read-only number of +1s on a post, and a note to remind you if you were one of the +1ers or not (sorry CmdrTaco for using your post for illustration purposes. I hope you don't mind)
The +1 button functionality will come later. To implement it, I have to reverse engineer the Ajax call that Google+ itself uses to bump the +1 on a post (I have a pretty good idea about how to do it) and create some mini-app in .NET invoked from teh gadget to do the bumping.
Either that or some jQuery trick may be possible as I have noticed that once I perform the login from a helper app that contains an embedded IE control, the gadget itself seems to become aware of all auth cookies that Google+ requires.
Anyway - the lack of API for Google+ is a royal pain in the arse and a real shame. I hope Google gets its act together soon, as having to reverse-engineer inner workings of G+ web pages to implement any standalone G+ client is not a good long-term strategy
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