Edit 2:  The gadget finally got approved!  Go get it!

Edit:  The gadget's not yet approved, and it turns out that gadgets hosted anywhere besides the Windows Live Gallery are not publicly viewable.  That sucks.  The screenshots below give an idea of how the gadget looks.  Hopefully it'll get approved soon so others can see and use the gadget.

Donavon, of LiveGadgets.net fame posted an article up on LiveSide today covering issues we gadget developers face when targeting our gadgets for Spaces.  This was the kick in the butt I needed to finally write my own preference storage mechanism so my own gadgets would be more useful here.  The first Spaces-targeted gadget is "My Xbox 360 Favorite Games".  As of this writing, the gadget is still in the approval queue.  You'll know it's available when the "Add to your space" button is available and the version number reads "1.3".  You can see the gadget running from my development server above.

Previously, the gadget used Live.com's standard preference storage mechanism.  That doesn't work on Spaces, so the gadget would load up to a screen asking you to input a gamertag.  Now only the page author (me, in this case) can set the gamertag, and viewers will either see what the author set ("Osty", in this case), or a note saying that the page author hasn't yet configured the gadget.  Of course, if you're running the gadget on Live.com it will continue to use Live.com's preference storage mechanism.

My main concern with the approach I've taken is that my storage solution may not scale if the gadget becomes popular.  Hopefully Spaces will step up and provide some sort of preference storage for gadgets soon.  Then again, I may be worried about nothing and it'll work flawlessly as currently implemented.

Viewer mode.  Note the lack of an "Edit" link:

Author mode.  The "Edit" link is back, which is how the author determines what Gamertag to show:

And finally, the edit view, where the author can change the Gamertag: