The dull look of the Google homepage disappeared when iGoogle was launched and the user experience was taken into consideration even more when the various themes started to pop out. At first they were just pictures, being pretty much a background for the page, but after that they evolved to the point to which the theme of choice would act differently depending on the season or time of day.

The downside to using them was the fact that
they weren’t grouped or cataloged, no user experience was available for any particular theme, except through direct contact of the person, and that was all too difficult.

Today saw the release of the Theme Directory that everybody waited for, the means through which feedback from others is available in the form of rating, comments and number of uses, pretty much the same way the Gadgets page for iGoogle works. Tony Ruscoe of blogoscoped.com noticed that all the themes currently seem to display less than 100 users, so that the feature might only start working when people click the "Add it now" buttons.

All the themes ever made available are grouped in this directory, both from the original March of last year and those brought up front in November. What’s pretty exciting is that the database for the directory is being worked upon live, people reporting themes being added continuously from the moment it was launched. However, at the time I got around to check it out, the themes others have spotted were not available any more. The name was still there, but no picture was attached to it.

Users have also been given the option to upload their themes and a link to the documentation was provided by the development team. Not the best way to launch such an important component altogether, it left me with the impression that it was rather slapdash. I guess that once again it’s going to be a "forget about the way it came, the good thing is that it’s here" moment from Google.