Comparison of widget engines

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This is a comparison of widget engines.

Contents

[edit] General

Engine Creator Version License
adesklets (information needed) 0.6.1 GPL
Amazing Brass 32Bits 0.21 Shareware
AveDesk Andreas Verhoeven 1.3 Donationware
Dashboard Apple Computer 1.0  (April 29th, 2005) Part of Mac OS X v10.4
DesktopX Stardock 3 Shareware
gDesklets Martin Grimme and Christian Meyer 0.35.4 GPL
Kapsules Andrew Powell 0.9.9 Freeware
KlipFolio Serence 3.0 Freeware
Opera Opera Software 9.02 Freeware
Serious Samurize Gustaf & Oscar Lundh 1.64 Semi-free software
SuperKaramba Hans Karlsson 0.39 GPL
Yahoo! Widget Engine Arlo Rose and Ed Voas 3.1.4 Freeware
Microsoft Gadgets Microsoft ? Part of Windows Vista

  The Yahoo! Widget Engine was originally released by Arlo Rose and Ed Voas as Konfabulator. The name was changed several months after Yahoo! acquired the software in July 2005.

[edit] Platform

Engine Mac OS X Windows XP Windows Vista Linux
adesklets No No No Yes
Amazing Brass No Yes ? No
AveDesk No Yes ? No
Dashboard Yes No No No
DesktopX No Yes ? No
gDesklets No No No Yes
Kapsules No Yes ? No
KlipFolio No Yes ? No
Opera Yes Yes Yes Yes
Serious Samurize No Yes ? No
SuperKaramba No No No Yes
Yahoo! Widget Engine Yes Yes ? No
Microsoft Gadgets No Yes Yes No

  The next version of the KDE is planned to include support for Dashboard widgets.

  As for the next major version the gDesklets' developers are planning to support Windows XP and Mac OS X.

  Early versions of Windows Sidebar have been successfully ported to Windows XP. The legality of doing this, however, is a bit questionable.

[edit] Technical

[edit] Languages

What programming languages the engines support. Most engines rely upon interpreted languages.

Engine HTML XHTML CSS XML JavaScript Perl Python C++ Executable
Amazing Brass ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Yes Yes
AveDesk ? ? Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes ?
Dashboard Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
DesktopX Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
gDesklets No No No Yes No No Yes No No
Kapsules ? ? ? ? ? Yes Yes ? ?
KlipFolio No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No
Opera Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No
Serious Samurize No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SuperKaramba ? ? ? ? ? ? Yes ? ?
Yahoo! Widget Engine No No No Yes Yes No No No No
Microsoft Gadgets ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  Amazing Brass has a custom programming language and compiler, known as Shiny, for easy creation of plugins. Compatible plugins written in any other language capable of producing a DLL can also be used.

  AveDesk can be extended using AveScripter, which supports plugins written with XML and Javascript, extended using CSS.

  Widgets for Kapsules and Serious Samurize can be written in any scripting language for which there is an ActiveScript engine, including PHP, JScript, VBScript and Ruby.

  This is only relevant for Opera's extensions; the web browser itself supports HTML, CSS and others.

  Samurize supports DLLs compiled with C++, Delphi, PowerBASIC, and FreeBasic, among others. HTML/XML/CSS support can be added by using certain plugins.

  Yahoo! Widget Engine supports Perl and Python indirectly through the use of the shell, provided that the interpreters are installed on the machine (on Mac OS X, they are by default).

  gDesklets might support Perl scripting through PyPerl in the next major version.

  The next major version of gDesklets will support Yahoo! Widgets. Thus, JavaScript support will be included, too.

  gDesklets will provide some CSS like dialect in the next major version.

  KlipFolio supports custom styles using CSS syntax.

  Yahoo! Widget Engine can interface with COM (windows) or AppleScript (Mac OS)

  Dashboard uses a technology called Cocoa Plugins.This allows for Objective-C code to be used through the plugin. The plugin is written with Cocoa and is compiled.