Lesson 10 - Gadgets and Widgets
Jeff Huber, senior vice president of engineering at Google, gave a brief presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit 2007 on what he called the programmable Web, referring mostly to gadgets.
“Applications are fundamentally changing from monolithic sites to smaller feeds and containers and the open distribution channel. The Web is the platform–a mosaic of gadgets, APIs and container all over the Web. What RSS did for content, gadgets are doing for applications. ” he said.
Applications are disaggregated, with widgets (gadgets in Google parlance) living in the cloud and embeddable and portable across the Web and even desktop. (Between the Lines blog)
A widget works on any page that lets you add an HTML block. You can put them on your blog, or your personalized start page, or your personal website. (about.com)
Google Gadgets
Gadgets are simple HTML and JavaScript mini-applications that can be embedded in webpages and other apps. Built-in JavaScript libraries make it easy to create gadgets that include tabs, Flash content, persistent storage, dynamic resizing, and more. To see the gallery of gadgets visit the Google Gadget Gallery.
I selected a time and hamster gadget. Move your mouse near the hamster and then click to see what happens.
To build your own go to the Google Gadget API to learn how. It requires some knowledge of XML and javascript.
Widgets
A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page, blog, or social profile, by an end user without requiring additional compilation. It is available in a ready-to-use format and is customizable by the user.
Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools (clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather etc). It is a snippet of HTML code which is available from the the website which hosts the widget where you can 'copy' that code and 'embed' it in your web page. Web widgets usually, but not always, use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.
Widget management systems offer a method of managing widgets that works on any web page, such as a blog or social networking home page. Many blog systems come with built in widget management systems as plug-ins. Users can obtain widgets and other widget management tools from various widget companies. (Wikipedia)
Below are a few samples from Widgetbox which is a site that serves millions of widgets per day and helps widget owners reach tens of millions of people per month. Visit their site to see the gallery of widgets and even create some yourself. If you click on the Get Widget tab at the bottom you will be able to add it to your site.
For a complete description on how to create a widget visit this blog post about 'How to Make and Place a Widget on Websites' by Doran Roggio which also talks about blidgets which are widgets built from your content: a blog feed + a widget.
Newsgator is another widget site that provides analytics with their widgets to track performance which lets you know how your widget is performing, how often people are viewing them and interacting with them.
* click the link below to read this week's homework assignment *
Assignment 10