With Microsoft’s announcement of Microsoft Gadgets we have a very interesting development, namely that we have now three “mainstream” widget platforms for Mac and/or Windows.
Microsoft’s Gadgets, and Apple’s Dashboard both are based on standards: HTML and javascript. (Microsoft seems to also support non-standard based technologies such as Atlas & ActiveX)
Yahoo’s Konfabulator is not based on HTML, although it does use javascript for the logic. The display is specified through XML.
For the sake of completeness, on linux, we have SuperKaramba and gDesklets . Both are built on python. Neither are built on HTML or javascript. Having worked on the core of gDesklets, it is most comparable to Konfabulator.
It is interesting that the Microsoft & Apple solution are the more like web development, using web standards but are deployable only on a single platform. Whereas Yahoo’s solution is cross platform (minus linux), but doesn’t use standard HTML for display. Odd world huh?
BTW, Microsoft is supporting Gadgets on their start.com site. Supposedly the big differentiator for start.com is that it allows outside developers to contribute gadgets (which are called startlets?). Unfortunately there is currently no info about developing startlets!
Hey Scoble, when are we going to see real information about how to develop startlets/gadgets?
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