I just got widgets. I remember seeing the original konfabulator as being available only for Macintosh machines. However, now that Yahoo! got its hands on it, they have ported it for PC and call it Yahoo! Widget Engine. At first, I didn't see a personal need for widgets. Just another needless app running on my machine. After a few months of seeing the widgets ads on yahoo's site I decided to give it a shot. I've installed them at home and at work and I'm happy to report I like what I've seen so far.
One of the default widgets hooks into my outlook and shows me my appointments for the day and my tasks list in a concise format. I hate opening those screens in outlook. Another checks my yahoo.com email account every 10 minutes and lets me know if I have new mail. Another shows me current weather conditions for my location of choice.
There are over 1000 freely available widgets, but what really prompted me to download them was the idea of building my own for whatever I might want. First off I'll tinker around and see how it all works under the hood. All widget run on a "widget engine", which is really the platform that does the heavy lifting and executes the widgets via a vast api. Widgets are written in XML and Javascript, two very simple and easy to learn programming languages. One is a markup language and the other a very friendly scripting language. So I believe anyone can build widgets, including me.
Take a look at the list of widgets available. Chances are someone has already built something that you've been wishing you had available. If not, drop me a line with ideas of which widgets still need building.
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I got widgets with my Mac OS 10.4. It runs underneath my desktop, available for when I want it. I don't use it much though. I am used to using applications for a lot of these things. I just need to get used to having access to them.
They are cute though, so I like them!
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