WHAT IS A WIDGET?
A widget is small tool that is placed on a web page or desktop to fulfill a very specific function. Generally this is to bring in content from another website such as sports scores, newsfeeds, and movie listings without needing to update the page manually.
There are 2 basic types of widgets:
1) Web widgets: also referred to as browser widgets or buttons, web widgets are small chunks of code that can be embedded in any web page, such as a personal blog, SNS profile or homepage
2) Desktop widgets: small applications that run on your desktop and usually (but not always) require that you download and install an engine in order to run them. The widget has become the icon of Web 2.0 as it is the ultimate customization tool. Widgets allows you to easily put together “mashups” from multiple sources and voila! – your very own unique webpage. A widget can sit on your desktop and tell you when I have new email without a browser open or your friends hear your favorite new song when they visit your MySpace profile.
Here are some examples of more widgets we like:
Wink Profile Widget: organized all your various social network profiles on your sidebarFlickr Uploader: allows you to upload, tag, and organize photos on the site without ever opening a browser
Digg News Reader: headlines of the most popular news stories on the web, updated automatically via
iPhone Widget: a countdown the iPhone’s June1 release along with the latest news on
Apple headlines and products.
1 response so far ↓
1 Nathan Cornillon // May 30, 2007 at 7:08 am
Widgets everywhere you look. You’ve been seeing them for years….
Outlook has Widgets. What? No, really. Look at the Today page in your mail section. That is an HTML page with widgets showing your calendar and other information.
Aside from public facing sites and widgets talked about here, Widgets are also an important part of corp intranet sites. SharePoint, WebSphere, and most other major portal support “widgets” (sometimes called Portlets, WebParts, WSRP or other such things).
“widgets” are part of the overall Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach. They are cool. They have been around for a long time, but finally got a good press agent!! Use them, love them, don’t let “web 2.0″ limit how you think of them.
Nathan
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