Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Macintosh, Shareware
Make your own widgets with aptly titled Widget Maker X 1.0
by Victor Agreda, Jr. Jul 25th 2005 at 4:15PM
Their Widget Maker X site isn't even up yet, but LAJ Design's new app looks like just the thing for the newbie widget author. Unfortunately I kept getting a bunch of crazy errors coming up in alert boxes, but those didn't seem to affect my ability to alter my widgets. It also said I was on day 6 of my 10-day trial. Even though I'd launched it just once, earlier today. But the promise is there. Can you really make widgets in a GUI?The way Widget Maker X works is that it allows you to open pre-existing widgets. You can view the "guts" of the widget, then save it in a sandbox environment for your testing pleasure. Unfortunately you still have to know all the necessary technologies: CSS, HTML, Javascript, etc. You'll also have to roll your own PNG files. This is a good intro to the widget insides, but otherwise you'll wind up doing a lot of stuff yourself. There are also a LOT of rough edges. Personally I'm not a big fan of paying $16.50 to beta-test an app.
UPDATE: The Widget Maker X site is now online.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Barb Dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
Even if it's rough around the edges, it's a promising idea -- sort of like a rapid application development environment for widgets. You have to know the underlying technologies, but it'll help save time by automating some of the more rote things. Thanks for the pointer, can't wait to check it out.
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J.T. Mill said 6:33PM on 7-25-2005
Man, I would kill for something like this for the Windows version of Konfabulator. Oh well, guess I'll just have to get a mac like everyone else. If I ever do get a Mac though I'll be sure to check this out.
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 4:54PM on 7-25-2005
I will say this, I hadn't bothered trying to write a widget until I used this. Now that I see the "insides" I feel a lot more confident about making my own...
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ad6am said 1:07PM on 7-27-2005
The one feature I want -- but don't want to learn programming in order to do -- is resize my widgets. Most take up way more space than necessary.
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