Widget Framework Resources

Question

So, my boss wants me to look into creating a widget for our product. Something to keep our users abreast of their information easily. So, I'm looking through the interwebs and it seems I have quite a few options. Google Widgets, Konfabulator/Yahoo Widgets, Spring Widgets, etc. etc.

I'm wondering if there's any resources to make a decision on which widget framework to use. Ideally, I'll find a widget framework that could run natively on Windows so I wouldn't need to have the users download anything besides the widget itself. Barring that, I definitely need Desktop and any other places the Widget could live (iGoogle, random web pages, Facebook, etc.) would be great. Obviously too, I want to know the quality of support, documentation and features.

Basic Google searching isn't finding a whole lot of comparison out there. Any good resources that can help me pick the best framework for my project?

Answer 1

I can't point you to a resource listing pros and cons, but if you're looking for Windows native with no additional downloads needed then Vista and Windows 7 support Sidebar gadgets which shouldn't require any additional installs.

You can study existing sidebar gadgets at the Windows Vista Sidebar Gallery

Note that if you create your gadget as something simple to host content from elsewhere on the web then you ought to be able to leverage that hosted content simply in most gadget frameworks.

Answer 2

I think you'll need to use several different widget frameworks to support the breadth of platforms that you're looking for. Like the other commenter, I think if you focus first on developing your own widget web service, you could then rapidly narrow down the widget frameworks to the ones that support easy styling of web service XHTML. This way, you'll be able to easily add new widgets and control the content of existing widgets on your end, while the actual UI widgets will be very simple WS clients that won't require much maintenance at all.

Apple Dashboard widgets and iGoogle widgets are examples for the MacOS desktop and the web that support this. We've taken this approach where I work, and I can say that once the initial (pretty straightforward) time of creating a widget web service framework is spent, creating and maintaining widgets is extremely straightforward, while allowing us to provide a nice user experience.