Widgets are mini apps that are designed to run on your desktop displaying self updating information to complement your display's work space. Eversince the frustrating days of Microsoft' s Active Desktop in 1997 to bring the revolution of internet to Windows, much have changed with the emergence of apps like Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard Widgets, bringing the use of widgets to mainstream.
Most widgets are useful day to day tools designed with emphasis for office use such as calendar, clocks, weather bar, search tools and the list goes on. Most of these can be obtained for free and among them are Desktop Sidebar, Kapsules, Opera Widgets, Google Desktop Sidebar, Yahoo Widget Engine 3. Even if you feel limited by the numerous choices offered, you can try your hand in coding your own panels with programs like Google Desktop Sidebar which offer a downloadable SDK to suite your needs.
I am only going to touch briefly on the two biggests online brands leaving the rest for all you tech savvy people to test and come up with you own conclusions. To begin with , we go take a look at the Google camp. Weighing in at 157 downloadable panels (not all are free), the range is broad: Adsense status indicators, hard disk life predictors,file backup utilities and games. Only downside is Google Desktop Sidebar is part of the Google Desktop Search application and, while it can be toggled off,you cannot download it as a standalone application. However, default choices are good, with the Google based widgets a particular highlight -one for Google Maps and another that takes RSS and Atom feeds and shows the full story in its Details pane.
Next we have the Yahoo camp, introducing the new kid on the block, Yahoo Widget Engine 3, originating from the JavaScript runtime of the Mac, weighing in with 2407 widgets (Windows and Mac) to choose from, thanks to the ancestral bloodline of the Konfabulator community. No other widget engine come close to the feature available: IP subnet calculators, streaming radio stations, i Tunes control, Web page text scrapers, Wi-fi hotspot finders and so on. The best part, it is the most stable and least system resource intensive of all the apps. Couple this with goodlooks of the widgets and Konfabulator (grandaddy of of all widget apps) under its skin, the only direction Yahoo Widget Engine 3 will be going is right.
Most widgets are useful day to day tools designed with emphasis for office use such as calendar, clocks, weather bar, search tools and the list goes on. Most of these can be obtained for free and among them are Desktop Sidebar, Kapsules, Opera Widgets, Google Desktop Sidebar, Yahoo Widget Engine 3. Even if you feel limited by the numerous choices offered, you can try your hand in coding your own panels with programs like Google Desktop Sidebar which offer a downloadable SDK to suite your needs.
I am only going to touch briefly on the two biggests online brands leaving the rest for all you tech savvy people to test and come up with you own conclusions. To begin with , we go take a look at the Google camp. Weighing in at 157 downloadable panels (not all are free), the range is broad: Adsense status indicators, hard disk life predictors,file backup utilities and games. Only downside is Google Desktop Sidebar is part of the Google Desktop Search application and, while it can be toggled off,you cannot download it as a standalone application. However, default choices are good, with the Google based widgets a particular highlight -one for Google Maps and another that takes RSS and Atom feeds and shows the full story in its Details pane.
Next we have the Yahoo camp, introducing the new kid on the block, Yahoo Widget Engine 3, originating from the JavaScript runtime of the Mac, weighing in with 2407 widgets (Windows and Mac) to choose from, thanks to the ancestral bloodline of the Konfabulator community. No other widget engine come close to the feature available: IP subnet calculators, streaming radio stations, i Tunes control, Web page text scrapers, Wi-fi hotspot finders and so on. The best part, it is the most stable and least system resource intensive of all the apps. Couple this with goodlooks of the widgets and Konfabulator (grandaddy of of all widget apps) under its skin, the only direction Yahoo Widget Engine 3 will be going is right.
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