Widget engine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer software, a widget engine is a software service available to users for running and displaying desktop widgets on the desktop. Desktop widgets are physically inspired applets that give access to information and frequently used functions such as clocks, calendars, news aggregators, etc.

The term widget engine is not to be confused with that of a widget toolkit. Toolkits are destined to GUI programmers, who combine several widgets to form a single application. A widget in a toolkit provide a single, low level interaction, and is prepared to communicate with other widgets in the toolkit. On the other hand, widget engines are intended for end users and each desktop widget is a stand-alone, task-oriented application which can be composed of several related interactions on its own.

The desktop widget model is attractive because of ease of development. Most of these widgets can be created with a few images and about 10 to several hundred lines of XML/JavaScript/VBScript source code. A single host software system, such as a web browser, runs all the loaded widgets. This allows several desktop widgets to be built sharing resources and code.

1 Desktop widgets
2 Mobile widgets
3 Web widgets
4 Information flow of Desktop Widgets
5 See also
6 Notes and references
7 External links

[edit] Desktop widgets

Examples of desktop widgets, shown here in DesktopX

The Wikipedia Widget, in Dashboard running under Mac OS X v10.4

Early developer version of Plasma Desktop with Plasmoids

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.
gDesklets of Linux systems.
Portlets in Google Desktop
Yahoo! Widgets
Klips in Klipfolio
Mobile widgets, Mywidz and WidSets are two examples

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.

Early examples of widgets were desk accessories on Mac OS (these, however, cannot access the internet). The Active Desktop system, developed by Microsoft, was the first system to enable desktop objects with internet access.^{[verification needed]} Widgets resemble the tiny freeware apps that were developed by enthusiasts during the 80s.

On 9 November 2006, the Web Application Formats Working Group in W3C released the first public working draft of Widgets 1.0.^[1] Widget is on its way to standardization.

[edit] 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 home-screen/"phone-top". Several J2ME-based mobile widget engines exist including BluePulse, Mywidz, WidSets, Webwag and WidX. However 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 including Access' NetFront, Openwave's MIDAS and Opera's Opera Platform. At this time, the only downloadable J2ME widget engine supporting both AJAX and the draft W3C standard is WidX by Joemoby[1].

[edit] 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.

[edit] Information flow of Desktop Widgets

A desktop widget is a small footprint application, which resides on the user’s 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’s 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.