Before I disappear for the weekend, I wanted to drop off what is version 1.0 of the Gaia Online Avatar Creator Widget for OS X (10.4+). While nothing more than a direct hook into the Yahoo mini browser, it provides the exact functionality I craved. You can customize and save your avatar from the Desktop. Without some server side rewriting of course, there's going to be a few nuances. I'd like to cover those before getting to the download link.
The most important thing is that this doesn't self refresh (yet). I'm going to try an iFrame approach and try and capture mouse activity to [reset" the refresher. This way online users, gold, etc all can stay current. Right now, it's not current, and there's nothing I can do for an hour's work of learning Dashboard.
The "cannot load your avatar" image is a BG image that is part of the yahoo browser. Since neither of them actually have a "refresh", you can take advantage of Dashboard's reload. Hit Cmd + R and you'll be on your way again.
Username and password are not stored currently. This is done partially for security reasons, partially for implementation time. Since the browser doesn't store it naturally, it would have to be a preference set using an AJAX request. This means the password would be stored cleartext (and the ideas about how to do it ended right about there). The session cookie is shared with safari though, so if you're logged in one place you'll be logged in both places. Please remember if you are using a shared computer to logout... please?
Okay, with those major things out of the way, let's get to downloading:
Download Gaia Avatar Creator Widget v 1.0 (45 KB)
If you are using Safari, the widget will prompt to auto-install. Firefox (and other) users will need to manually add the widget to their ~/Library/Widgets/ directory.
In response to "Gaia Avatar Dashboard Widget":
Score again for Mac users. XD
Widgets are really great. In addition to this one, I loaded up with widgets for weather, wikipedia, google maps, online translators, bart planners, thesaurus, and all sorts of other neat stuff.
Dashboard is definitely one of the cooler Tiger features. :3