The iGoogle Theme Directory is now live and lets you view, select themes, and  you can now also rate them, add comments and view how many users each one has, in a similar way to Google Gadgets.

The theme directory, which is available through the “Select theme” link on your iGoogle homepage, contains all the original themes created by famous designers: Troy Lee's Supermoto Mayhem, Yves Behar's Earth-light, John Maeda's Simplicity is Complex, Mark Frauenfelder's Adventure in Lollipopland and a new theme created by Google: Countryside.

Themes By Google: Google is actively uploading new themes as fast as I’m typing this, so the directory now includes those and other previously unseen themes by Google, such as Watery Region* (shown below), Green*, Purple* and Orange*. [Google Blog]

Here’re all the Google-created themes available so far: Classic, Winter Village, Winter Scape, Watery Region*, Aja Tiger, Tea House, TC*, Sweet Dreams, Spring Scape, Skateboard*, Purple*, Solar System, Orange*, JR, Hong Kong, Green*, City Scape, Countryside, Bus Stop, Beach, Autumn.

Themes By Others: All these available so far all appear to be hosted by Google Code on the themeapi.googlecode.com subdomain:[google blogoscoped]

• Spore* By Will Wright
• The Sims 2* By Rod Humble
• Books* By Rich Silverstein
• Projected Box* By Todd Oldham
• Adventure in Lollipopland By Mark Frauenfelder
• Simplicity is Complex By John Maeda
• Supermoto Mayhem By Troy Lee
• Eat Every Sandwich* By Jeff Goodby
• Earth-light By Yves Behar
• Harvest Party* By Michael Chiarello
• The Long Tail* By Chris Andreson

Some more themes, not yet included in the directory:

• Projected Box (3-D rendering of colorful projected boxes)
• Books
• The Sims 2
• Spore
• Eat Every Sandwich
• Harvest Party
• Chris Anderson's The Long Tail

iGoogle Themes API

The Google Code blog has posted about the iGoogle Themes API. To create your own theme, you can download the Theme XML template from the Themes API homepage and then submit your theme to the directory.

"The Themes API lets you create custom designs for iGoogle. Themes are visual designs that personalize iGoogle pages for millions of users. Themes are not just static designs--they can change throughout the day to reveal a visual storyline, message, or anything else."

Google Code Blog encourages everyone to personalize iGoogle. "Creating your own theme isn't rocket science. If you can create a webpage, then you can create a theme. There are only three steps involved: designing images for the header and footer, entering metadata and color information in an XML file, and submitting the theme."

Google, iGoogle, Google Personalized Homepage, Themes, Directory, API, iGoogle Themes