Software widget

Software widget

A software widget is a generic type of software application comprising portable code intended for one or more different software platforms. The term often implies that either the application, user interface, or both, are light, meaning relatively simple and easy to use, as in an applet, as opposed to a more complete software package such as a spreadsheet or word processor.

Types of widgets

Because the term, and the coding practice, has been extant since at least the 1980s, it has been applied in a number of contexts. [cite conference
author = Ralph R. Swick, Mark S. Ackerman
title = The X Toolkit: More Bricks for Building User-Interfaces, or, Widgets for Hire
booktitle = USENIX Winter
pages = 221–228
year = 1988
url = http://www-ftp.lip6.fr/pub/distributed_systems/athena/xtk.PS.gz
accessdate = 2007-01-03
]

A GUI widget is part of a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows a computer user to control and change the appearance of elements for operating a software application. In this context a widget may refer to a generic GUI element such as a check box, to an instance of that element, or to a customized collection of such elements used for a specific function or application (such as a feature for users to customize their computer screen appearances)

Disclosure widgets are specific types of widgets that may be hidden or expanded by computer users.

A desktop widget is a specialized GUI widget intended to run on a computer desktop (such as those provided by Microsoft Windows or Apple's OS X operating system) for computer users to control simple utility functions such as clocks, messaging services, and calendars. A mobile widget is the comparable equivalent for mobile devices (i.e. smart phones).

A Metawidget is a widget for controlling the operation of other widgets within a GUI. [Blattner, Glinert, Jorge and Ormsby, 'Metawidgets: towards a theory of multimodal interface design'. Appears in "Computer Software and Applications Conference, 1992. COMPSAC '92. Proceedings, Sixteenth Annual International" ISBN 0-8186-3000-0.]

A Web widget is a portable application installed and executed, typically by non-expert webmasters on HTML-based web pages, to offer site visitors shopping, advertisements, videos, or other simple functionality from third party widget publishers.

A "widget application" is a third party application developed for an online social network platform, with the user interface or the entire application hosted by the network service. Social network companies such as Facebook and Myspace host these applications and provide them underlying platform services (such as display and storage of user-provided photos and other content, profile information about end users and communications features with other users) through special-purpose application programming interfaces. [cite news|accessdate=2008-05-07|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201894_pf.html|title=Widgets Become Coins of the Social Realm |work=The Washington Post|date=2007-11-03|author=Rampell, Catherine|page=D01 ] [cite web |url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/23/BU7C11TAES.DTL |title=Developers compete at Facebook conference |accessdate=2008-08-14 |last=Ustinova |first=Anastasia |date=2008-07-23 |work=San Francisco Chronicle |publisher= |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] [cite web |url=http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=48242 |title=Facebook Expands Power of Platform Across the Web and Around the World |accessdate=2008-08-14 |date=2008-07-23 |publisher=Facebook |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] The term is used fairly loosely, in that many such applications are more complex internally and in operation than the simple applets that are called "widgets" in other contexts. The relationship between platform and developer is mutually beneficial, with the social network offering hardware and software infrastructure, and access to the social network's end user base, and with application publishers ranging from amateur developers to organized companies such as RockYou! and slide.com providing content and features that make the social network services more useful for their members. At present, there is no fee or payment between developers and social network platforms, and attempts to realize revenue from widgets (primarily advertising by the widget applications and sale of electronic commerce goods and services within the widgets) have been relatively unsuccessful.

Related subjects

A widget engine is a software service that supports widgets.

A Widget toolkit is a set of programming tools that help developers design elements of a user interface.

Dashboards (such as those included with Apple's OS X) are features within graphical operating systems that function as widget engines and allow users to arrange and customize collections of desktop widget as part of their personal account configurations.

references

ee also

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