What programs are used to build standalone desktop widgets that interact with online php and mysql?

Question

I have seen mention of Java and Python. I need something that can be installed on a users desktop without them having to also install Java or anything else. User simplicity is a must.

This widget will log into an online php based calendar that accesses mySQL. Any pointers on what I should be reading up on? Python?

Thanks! Joel

Update: Thanks for the comments so far. This will eventually need to be for any OS, but certainly Windows.

To clarify, I'm wanting something the user will download from me, install, and then it'll show up in the system tray (windows) For Mac-I guess it'll show up in the dashboard?

Answer 1

Sounds like something like Adobe Air, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Appcelerators Titanium is what you want.

Answer 2

Or Yahoo Widgets.

Answer 3

Should it be OS independent? Widgets for Apple's dashboard are just HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Answer 4

Adobe Air is the popular solution to this problem these days

Answer 5

Check out Tcl. Then use starkit/starpack or freewrap to generate your stand-alone app. Tcl gets little love from the general development community but it has a very friendly and dedicated community of users.

Tcl developers can generally be reached at The tcler's wiki (wiki.tcl.tk) and the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup. And of course on stackoverflow.

Answer 6

The others here are basically right. You don't specify what the platform you want to put this on. You have a couple of options:

1. Native program. This can be made to require no installation. This would be Win32/MFC and C/C++, or Cocoa and Objective-C. Not necessarily easy to program (fetching a web page in Win32?), not portable, but it will work.
2. Python/Ruby/Perl/etc. These are easier, but require either the runtime, or the runtime to be bundled up in the application, which makes it rather large. Flash applications can bundle the runtime, I think.
3. Java/.NET. A good way to do it, but they will need the runtime, which can't be put inside the executable.
4. A widget. A special web page, recent OSes support it. See below.

I would go with the widget, if possible. It's just HTML and JavaScript. They're easy to write, and work well. OS X, Vista, Windows 7, and Linux all have support for widgets and won't need additional software. Windows XP would need a runtime (like Yahoo! Widgets) to be installed first.

Each OS does things slightly differently, so changes would have to be made to make a widget run in Dashboard in OS X and as a Gadget in Windows Vista/7.

I hope this helps. I made a widget to interact with a web application that company made. I made is for OS X (my OS), and it was quite easy. It just uses XMLHttpRequest to load some XML, parses it out, and updates it's self. It's quite simple. The same server side code can serve any kind of widget, as well as real applications.