Ask Download Squad: What are widgets worth?

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Apple, Yahoo!, Freeware

Ask Download Squad: What are widgets worth?

by Marc Perton Jul 29th 2005

Last week, we asked you to help us decide which was the best alternative to Microsoft Office. Not surprisingly, OpenOffice.org was a big favorite, though many of you admitted that, for certain tasks, Office still rules. "For me, it comes down to Outlook. Everything else being equal ... there is no real replacement for Outlook," said Mark Orchant. Others cited Project, Visio and Excel as being the crucial applications that they just can't replace. Looks like there's still an opportunity out there for an enterprising developer who wants to take on the Redmond giant. Here's this week's question:

With Yahoo's acquisition of Konfabulator earlier this week, widgets were front and center like never before. For a lot of people, though, the kerfuffle over Konfab drew a big question mark. Though Apple may have helped make widgets more of a mainstream concept with OSX Tiger's Dashboard, the fact is that many computer users still see widgets as little more than eye candy; nice to look at, but no substitute for full-fledged apps. So, this week, we put the question to you: do you find widgets useful or not? And if you find them useful, what do you use them for? Post your answer in the Comments section below. And, if you'd like to have your question included here, send it to us using this form. We'll post one question each week.

And for more on widgets, check out this post at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

C.K. Sample, III said 10:52PM on 7-28-2005

Actually, with Dashboard, no. I don't find widgets useful. They aren't within easy view. However, since Yahoo! took over Konfabulator I've gone back to running the weather app in the lower right corner of my screen set at Desktop level, so I can see it whenever i like and it never gets in the way of other things. I also have the picture frame widget loaded at desktop level in the middle of my screen and set to load up a random picture from Flickr every 15 minutes, so whenever I'm bored I glance to see what new bits people are posting.

David Chartier said 12:12AM on 7-29-2005

I have to admit Konfabulator's offering has finally matured, and its features above and beyond what Dashboard do are tempting. One annoying thing though: I've had my eyes on Konfab widgets for about a year or so now, checking in to see what's new, and it just doesn't seem like there's nearly as many good, solid, useful widgets available. There's a billion different iTunes controllers, but nothing like the Tagbag, Google Maps or Backpack widgets. Or even the MacWireless that lets you CHOSE a wifi network (instead of just looking at them). I guess to boil it down: the Konfabulator platform seems a bit more feature-packed, but the widgets designed for it don't hold a candle to the functional and now-essential widgets designed for Apple's Dashboard.

Victor Agreda, Jr. said 12:30AM on 7-29-2005

Dashboard is pretty useless to me as well. It eats up massive CPU cycles sometimes, works best on a dual-G5, and I have to "invoke" it.

Konfabulator widgets on the desktop are like sweet manna from heaven. I can make things float above it all, or stick down below for good. I use several and they really do save me time.

Now I wish you could author widgets for either interchangeably, because obviously the "cool kids" are making Dashboard widgets... Maybe the Yahoo move will change this?

ScOObyDoo said 9:06AM on 7-29-2005

I tried it for a day, and found it pretty useless. Everything I need (want) is available in my taskbar (weatherbug etc...). The widgets just made my desktop cluttered, and without a very high resolution monitor half my screen would be filled with widgets. I can understand why Macfans would like them, but the Windows world is a bit more mature than they are.

Stephen said 9:35AM on 7-29-2005

long time Konfab user on Mac....even bought Konfab for windoze when it came out....find Dashboard completely lame. huge CPU hog, and really useless interface...can't be accessed while doing other things...hope Yahoo doesn't screw up Konfab.....big fan of Arlo and Perry (not affiliated....just enthusiastic supporter)

ej said 9:59AM on 7-29-2005

I really thought Konfabulator was the best thing since sliced bread when I found it. However, by the time my free trial had run out and it was asking me to pay I just couldn't seem to justify the expense. I did reintsall now that it's free, but I only really use The Weather and TV Scraper widgets.

JT Mill said 10:15AM on 7-29-2005

I find some widgets more useful than others. The ones I really like or the refrance ones that sit on your desktop and give you stats on things such as Wifi strengh, the current time(I never look towards the bottom left), or the current weather. Widgets like calculators or nifty search bars don't help me very much though.

cmdln said 10:20AM on 7-29-2005

I used to use Konfabulator. I was ambivalent until I started using Dashboard and heard some pretty interesting notions at WWDC 2005. I think widgets are valuable but not for the ones that are standalone apps, per se. There are a limited number of functions for little standalone widgets and if they have not already been fulfilled, they will be soon. There are two other, more valuable classes of widgets, only one of which Konfabulator addresses. The one K addresses are widgets as clients of internet information services--rss feeds, web applications, that sort of thing. The second class, the one I think Dashboard hits, are as alternate views or extensions of existing applications. The Delicious Library widget is the best example, here, and I think Apple developers have just barely scratched the surface. Beyond user value, both execution engines have their warts, neither one of them are going to win any resource or performance awards (if there were such a thing) any time soon. I do like that Dashboard uses more standard web development technologies and that the advanced plugins you create for it also work as is in Safari.

Lee Creasy said 10:42AM on 7-29-2005

the most useful widgets i have are my battery, ram and cpu meters. i tend to find that when i run all the extra little fun gadgets konfabulator tends to get a mind of its own, running each widget as a seperate process really peeves me.

Marc Orchant said 11:42AM on 7-29-2005

I'm a huge Konfabulator fan. I bought it when it was still a for-pay proposition and have never regretted it. The system meters are great, as is the weather widget. The RSS widgets are still a bit clumsy but with Yahoo! development muscle now assisting Arlo and Perry not only in direct development but creating a much broader audience for the third-party widget developers, I'm really optimistic about Konfabulator's future.

Christopher said 12:03PM on 7-29-2005

I used Konfabulator about a year and a half ago. I used it primarily for viewing network and disk activity, as well as battery level and Airport signal. When it asked me for money, I hacked up some alternatives, downloaded freeeware applications, and uninstalled it.

Dashboard struck me as a poorly done alternative to Konfabulator. The modality of it is clutzy, and doesn't serve my purposes at all (I use Konfabulator for a quick Expose "Show Desktop" with disk/net info).

When Dashboard was released, everyone said, "Oh no, Konfabulator is going to fade into obscurity." Now that Konfabulator is free, I think the reverse is going to happen; Dashboard will be all but forgotten and dead in a year.

Sean said 3:13PM on 7-29-2005

I tried Konfabulator (when it was still a demo) after already being sold on Dashboard Widgets. Perhaps it goes back to "the first twin you meet will likely become your favourite" but I like the hiding nature (and other aspects) of Dashboard. I like to think of it this way: If I need to use Expose to show my desktop to reveal The "K" widgets there (to get a piece of information), it is just as much work to move my mouse the other corner to see Dashboard.
I use the weather widget (for the various places I live - and right now for Paris, where my girlfriend is travelling), about 6 search widgets (such as for php, all recipies, amazon, wikipedia, etc.), and some stats widgets (battery, trashbin, free disk space, sysstats). I also keep up album art and controls for itunes (inc. symphonic--a great widget) and tiger's unit converter. Others, such as tv tracker, come out as needed. Why do I mention this? Well, I am (usually) just on my 12" Powerbook screen and I can access all of this information with the stroke of my finger. If I want it, it is there. If I don't, it is gone. I use dashboard several times a day (at least), and I find it convinient as heck (note: I do know The "K" comes with a Dashboard like tool, and I also understand that some may like the convinience of seeing some info float on their screens all of the time. I like a clean desktop myself, so it boils down to preference I guess. And for what I use it for, it is just as quick and easy to access the information I need using D.B. as is launching an app or script with Quicksilver.)

AFD said 7:38PM on 7-29-2005

For Windows, I really like Rainlendar (I guess that could be considered a widget). It's a tiny calendar that also displays Tasks and Events from Outlook w/adjustable transparency. Free, from rainlendar.net

Samurize is also another fun Windows app, for creating & customizing your own desktop widgets. Free, from samurize.com

Generally, I find this stuff to be neat.. but frivolous enough not to warrant use on a daily basis.

Tom said 7:46PM on 7-29-2005

I find some useful, some not useful. Personally, I think the RSS widgets are the biggest waste because I always have firefox open anyways. Other things like memory watching or whatever their called widgets seem so counter productive. After going though the all the widgets available for konfabulator for windows, I didn't find any of any use except for ones that come with the program, the weather one (which I really don't need due to forcast fox), the what to do (I'm very forgetful), the Itunes controller (don't care for foxytunes, also the most used since the media keys don't work with Itunes), and the picture frame, but I only use that for eyecandy.

Resuna said 11:21PM on 7-29-2005

I haven't upgraded to Tiger yet... I'm sort of worried about Spotlight replacing the existing Finder search, stuff like that. I really like the idea of Spotlight, but I keep hearing about problems, you know...

Anyway, I played with Amnesty Widget Browser, and it gave me Widgets in Panther, but those Dashboard developers seem to think I'm made of CPU. My poor Mac Mini just couldn't handle all the busywaiting.

Konfabulator widgets seems to be written by people who are willing to wait a second or ten to do an update, so I can actually afford the CPU to run them.

I played with developing a widget, spent an hour this morning porting a program I'd written as a Tcl script (http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/sw/barclock-0.9.tar.gz) I'd written last year into a K2 widget (http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/sw/BarcodeClock.widget).

God damn, the K2 API sucks. Calculating the X and Y coordinates of all your objects is like going back to the Apple ][. What happened to layout managers, like, you know, HTML? What's that like in Dashboard? Unpack my app, someone, convert it to Dashboard, tell me what it looks like. I can't be arsed installing Amnesty again or upgrading to Tigger to check it out...

Adora said 12:34PM on 7-30-2005

Always on the lookout for new desktop goodies, I first tried Konfabulator a year ago or whenever I first heard about it, and I was mostly disappointed. Interesting concept? Yes. Widgets available that I really need to have running constantly? No, not really. =P Konfabulator's main downfall is the amount of resources required for utilities that many people like, but few people can afford to run continuously.

:: Lisa
:: adora [at] techslut [.] net

Blog Jones said 2:42PM on 7-30-2005

Personally, I prefer DesktopX's widgets. DesktopX comes from the same people who brought you WindowBlinds.

You can program in javascript or VBScript, and it's pretty easy to program in. You can also (if you buy the "Professional Edition") export widgets as .exe files that don't need DesktopX installed to run, so you can give a widget to friends who don't want to install the DesktopX stuff.

Greg said 3:28PM on 7-30-2005

Recently started using Kofabulator on my desktop and I've found it a nice addition to keep on top of things. As soon as I log on to Windows I see an overview of today's and tomorrows appointments, the weather forecast, and a rotating frame my pictures. I also use the battery meter as well as the memory monitor consistently.

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