Five by Five

written by Al Binns, Technical Director, Five by Five

So what are widgets and gadgets? Well in simple terms widgets are a popular new mechanism to display syndicated content or mini applications outside of their traditional website based environments. Essentially they leverage the power of Internet-based technologies in order to create components which traditionally would have been software based.

OK, not so simple! It’s all about lifting the useful bits of someone’s website and putting them directly on your desktop. That means you’ve got a collection of really useful tools in one convenient, accessible place.

Calling widgets ‘new’ is, perhaps, stretching the truth. The concept has been around for a fair time (well, in web terms). Banner advertisements (which have been around for years) are, in fact, a specialised form of widget. Anyone who’s ever seen a blog with a YouTube video on it has been looking at a widget. So even if you haven’t already heard about widgets, the chances are you’ve used them.

What is relatively new are portals that allow users to compile their own mash-up of widgets and even newer desktop-based widgets.

As usual, the big players have fast become wise to the potentially lucrative market offered by widgets and, as usual, they’ve all taken a slightly different approach. To confuse matters a number of different terms have sprung up - gadget, bBadge, module, capsule, snippet, mini, flake… at a fundamental level, they’re all widgets!

To consolidate, we’ve got two forms of widgets: widgets basically come in one of two forms web-based and desktop based…

Web-based widgets have become popular with the advent of personalised homepages, where the user basically builds up their page in blocks. These blocks range from feeds, mini applications that serve as gateways, to full content. They may also include fun little games useful to fill a spare 5 minutes. Predictably, all the main players do things slightly differently. Check out Live (Microsoft), Google and Yahoo for variations on a theme.

Desktop widgets have been part of Mac OS X since the release of its latest operating system - Tiger - which has been out for a couple of years. Windows has made the move to catch up with the recent release of Vista which includes a ‘sidebar’. Add to the mix Yahoo’s Widget Engine and Google’s Desktop, and it’s clear that the corporates see a healthy future in desktop widgets.

As you can see there is already a myriad of options available to people when it comes to widgets. It’s only a matter of time before they become truly mainstream. This opens up a whole new channel to promote brand awareness and communicate to potential customers. Even better, it’s likely that your existing website already has some functionality that can be adapted and used through this new channel.

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taken from the Gadget Edition of the Five by Five Review, May 2007