Widget engine
Types
Desktop widgets
Main article: software widget
The Wikipedia Widget, in Dashboard running under Mac OS X v10.4
Early developer version of Plasma Desktop with Plasmoids
Desktop widgets (commonly just called widgets) are interactive virtual tools that provide single-purpose services such as showing the user the latest news, the current weather, the time, a calendar, a dictionary, a map program, a calculator, desktop notes, photo viewers, or even a language translator, among other things. Examples of widget engines include:
Dashboard widgets of Apple Macintosh
Microsoft gadgets in Windows Vista and in the Windows Live system
Plasmoids are widgets in Plasma the workspace for the KDE desktop environment.
Portlets in Google Desktop
Yahoo! Widgets
gdesklets, adesklets, and Screenlets in Linux
Opera widgets on all platforms ( desktop, mobile TVs, gaming consoles) using the Opera browser’s rendering engine.
Originally, desk accessories were developed to provide a small degree of multitasking, but when real multitasking OSes became available, these were replaced by normal applications.
Blidgets
Blidgets are desktop widgets that connect the user to a blog.
Widget draft standard
On 9 November 2006, the Web Application Formats Working Group in W3C released the first public working draft of Widgets 1.0.. The intention is to standardise some aspects of widgets. The Opera browser is the first widget engine to adopt this draft W3C standard..
Mobile widgets
Most mobile widgets are like desktop widgets, but for a mobile phone. Mobile widgets can maximize screen space use and may be especially useful in placing live data-rich applications on the device idle-screen/home-screen/”phone-top”. Several Java ME-based mobile widget engines exist, but the lack of standards-based APIs for Java to control the mobile device home-screen makes it harder for these engines to expose widgets on the phone-top.
Several AJAX-based native widget platforms are also available for mobile devices.
The growing pervasiveness of mobile widgets is easily understood. While widgets are a convenience in the online world,they can be looked at as near-essential in the mobile world. The reason: the mobile device is small and the interface is often challenging. Wading through large amounts of information in a mobile environment isn’t just a nuisance; it’s a near impossibility.
One of the biggest challenges of widget development is writing multiple sets of computer code so that a widget will be compatible with multiple operating systems and types of devices.
Companies considering new mobile widgets should evaluate and then deploy applications according to four criteria: the business model, distribution model, server-side application framework and the run-time environment.
Many solutions are growing for mobile widgets. Among them the BONDI initiative whitin OMTP is trying to defragment these solution allowing the same widget to be run on different mobile phones allowing secure access to mobile phone capabilities.
Web widgets
Main article: Web widget
Web browsers can also be used as widget engine infrastructures. The web is an environment well suited to distribution of widgets, as it doesn’t require explicit interaction from the user to install new code snippets.
Web widgets have unleashed some commercial interest, due their perceived potential as a marketing channel, mainly because they provide interactivity and viral distribution through social networks. The first known web widget, Trivia Blitz, was introduced in 1997. It was a game applet offered by Uproar.com (the leading online game company from 2000 – 2001) that appeared on over 35,000 websites ranging from Geocities personal pages to CNN and Tower Records. When Uproar.com was acquired by Vivendi Universal in 2001, the widget was discontinued.
TV set widgets
Widgets are also available for TV’s.Yahoo! Widget Engine is announced as a component of the next generation TV sets.
Information flow of Desktop Widgets
A desktop widget is a small footprint application, which resides on the user desktop using a small desktop space and computer resources, such as the HDD and RAM. Its purpose is to provide relevant information to the user in a non-intrusive manner and using few resources. Basically, desktop widgets enable the user to view on demand, capsuled information from predetermined data sources. Ideally, a desktop widget must present personalized content, based on the user preferences. It is supposed to beam the most important information that a user requires on a day to day basis. Most of the desktop widgets are available as free downloads from the vendors Web sites.
See also
Widget toolkit
GUI widget
Notes and references
^ “Widgets 1.0”. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/.
^ “Web Specifications Supported in Opera 9”. Opera ASA. http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/opera9/#wml.
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Widget engines (Comparison)
Modes
Software widget Web widget
Engines
adesklets AveDesk Dashboard DesktopX gDesklets Google Desktop Gadgets Kapsules KlipFolio Microsoft Gadgets NetFront Netvibes Opera Plasma Screenlets Serious Samurize SuperKaramba WebKit WidSets Yahoo! Widgets
Categories: Graphical user interface | Widget engines
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