Google Homepage Themes

iGoogle allows you to create your very own personalized homepage and allows you to add a bit of sparkle to it, by applying a Google homepage theme of your choice. Marissa Mayer, the company's vice president of search products and user experience, has described the launch of Google homepage themes as an attempt "to make (the site) feel more like an online living room". Let us find out more about themes for Google search engine homepage through the following article.

What is a Theme?
A theme basically is a way to modify your iGoogle homepage with the help of a custom design. Technically, a theme is a list of 'cascading sheet style' files, popularly known as CSS. This adds a versatile value since it enables the users to create their own varied themes. A theme is created by using a basic XML file. It is mandatory that every theme contains the 'iGoogle' logo. The power of customizing font styles, the text and link colors, navigation bars and footer and header images as well as gadget frames, all lie with the user.

How to Apply a Theme?
It's quite simple. In order to use Google homepage, visit Google and search for 'Google homepage theme' and select a theme of your choice and add it to your page. You can change your theme at any time. In case you think you like your old Google page better, simply switch back by clicking on the 'classic home' link.

History of Themes
Homepage theme were launched by the company on the 20th of March, 2007. Google started off with six basic themes which were primarily focused on landscapes. These included a winter hills theme, bus stop, Japanese tea garden, city skyline, sweet dreams theme and a beach theme.

Dynamic Themes
An interesting feature of these themes is that they exhibit dynamic behavior that is, the theme gets modified automatically in coordination with the local clock. Not just that, but even the weather conditions are reflected in the themes, which help in giving the user a personal and homely feeling.

Technical Side of Dynamic Theme
Technically, a dynamic Google homepage theme is a set of multiple designs, each of which corresponds to a particular set time. The successive designs may narrate a visual tale as the day progresses, or may simply reflect the atmospheric changes with sunrise and nightfall. Creating a dynamic theme is indeed a creative challenge for designers. A page mainly consists of various attributes like background color, font, text color, etc. Themes hold the authority to modify key values of these attributes with time. Different attributes are specified for different designs of a dynamic theme.

How to Create a Theme
If you wish to create a theme, you can start off by letting your creativity loose and coming up with great visual designs. Do make it a point to consult the program policy of Google for specifications. Three major assets which come in handy while creating a theme are iGoogle Themes Tools, Theme XML template and iGoogle sandbox. iGoogle sandbox helps you out with additional features for customizing chat options, updating gadgets and buttons and also when it comes to navigation. Once you have created a proper theme, you must test it. Finally you should submit it to the iGoogle directory. If approved, the theme can be applied by all the Google users worldwide. A theme can have a maximum number of 48 individual designs. This implies that the page will display a new design in every half an hour.

Themes for Google Homepage
Today Google has made a number of additions and has extended the Google homepage themes to a wide range of categories. These categories may be listed as follows:

• Artists
• Games
• Travel
• Comics
• Soccer
• Animals
• Sports
• Destinations
• Abstract
• Nature
• Travel
• Environment
• Trendy
• Food
• Fun
• Causes

Each of these categories have numerous themes to offer. Google keeps adding categories occasionally to suit the current events like festivals, sports, various days etc. For example, Google recently added 'Soccer' as a category on account of the FIFA World Cup. There is a special section of artist themes of Bob Dylan, Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Celine Dion and many more. These are few of the best home page themes provided by Google.

These themes of Google homepage are popular because they allow users to adorn their homepages with their favorite movie stars, scenic locales, cute little pets, or mind-blowing abstract pictures. Hope that the information provided in the article helps the readers in applying or creating their own Google homepage.