Widget engine

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In computer software, a widget engine is host software system for physically inspired applets on the desktop (desktop widgets).

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. However, the widget model is attractive because of ease of development. Most widgets can be created with a few images and from less than ten to several hundred lines of XML/JavaScript/VBScript, depending on their complexity.

1 Desktop widgets
2 Mobile widgets
3 Major widget engines
4 See also
5 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

Two commonly referred-to types of widgets are the Yahoo! Widgets and the Dashboard widgets of Apple Macintosh computer users (Microsoft refers to them as Gadgets both in Windows Vista and the Windows Live system.). KlipFolio refers to them as Klips, and Google Desktop refers to them as either panels or gadgets. Widgets, in this case, are downloadable interactive virtual tools that provide services such as showing the user the latest news, the current weather, a dictionary, a map program, sticky notes, or even a language translator, among other things.

A desktop widget typically provides easy access to frequently used functions or provides some visual information. 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]} (see IE4 Desktop Gallery). Typical widgets include News aggregators, clocks, calculators, calendars, desktop notes and weather forecasts. These little applications resemble the tiny freeware apps that were developed by enthusiasts during the 80s.

On 09 November 2006, the Web Application Formats Working Group in W3C released the first public working draft of Widgets 1.0. Widget is on its way to standardization.

[edit] Mobile widgets

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 WidSets, Mobidgets and BluePulse. However the lack of standards-based APIs for Java to control the mobile device home-screen make it harder for these engines to expose widgets on the phone-top. Several AJAX-based widget platforms are also available for mobile devices including Openwave's MIDAS and Opera's Opera Platform.

[edit] Major widget engines

Yahoo! Widget Engine is Yahoo's widget engine, which allows their widgets to be displayed directly on the desktop, or on a splash screen, similar to that of Mac OS X's
SpringWidgets is the first widget engine that works on the desktop, in blog sidebars and on MySpace pages using the same file. It is owned by Fox Interactive Media and allows you to "pop" widgets off the page if you have the engine installed.
Kapsules, a free project for Microsoft Windows that first aimed to replicate the above Mac OS X v10.4 functionality, and is now compatible with many scripting languages.
Google Desktop, a free utility that helps you search your desktop for files and also has gadgets (as they call them) for your desktop.
KlipFolio, a small, free dashboard and sidebar application for Microsoft Windows that uses user contributed Klips.
Desk Accessories in older versions of Mac OS provided widget-like functionality.
Opera's Cross-Platform Light-Weight Browser supports widgets and already has a library of user-created widgets available for download.