Widgets should be a marketing/internet dream come true. You get a browser free, relatively easy to produce, web and/or system enabled, visually unique, lightweight application living full time on someone’s desktop. However there is one factor crippling development: deployment.About Widgets:

For those not familiar with widgets they come in a 1/2 dozen platforms by all the big internet brands: Microsoft, Apple, Google & Yahoo, and by smaller web page based platforms such as Netvibes and its many clones. They are not cross compatible and unless you’re on a Mac or Microsoft Vista, getting them to run on your desktop requires users to install third party software.

The oldest platform is Konfabulator (now Yahoo) and it was a clear cut winner for development. It had every feature and no competition. It was available for PC and Mac long before Apple and Microsoft were in the game. The only downside was you had to install the widget engine, and then the widget(s) that you wanted.

Apple solved the 2 stage download problem by building widgets into the operating system. They created virtually the same end product, but with totally different code.

Yahoo countered, and purchased Konfabulator which pushed widgets to a much larger PC market. Despite the 2 stage download problem they could have cornered the PC widget market. Instead, they blew their chance by heavily bundling the engine with piles of Yahoo branded widgets, along with a terrible installer that added tool bars, changed startup options and required users to get a Yahoo login. Yahoo widgets were a burden to slower systems and was not backwards compatible with all Konfabulator widgets. To top it off, they released version after version in attempts to free up system resources. Every version came with the installer but lacked the guarantee that older widgets would work.

Microsoft had plans to solve the problem by releasing built in gadgets with Vista, along with a patch for XP, but decided to scrap plans for widgets on XP. Due to Vista’s low adoption rate it leaves a huge percent without platform standardization.

Google desktop suffers much in the same ways as Yahoo widgets: with 2 stage download and excessive bundled software. The software features are sure to turn away a healthy number of users. As well as giving you gadgets, all files on your computer are indexed and then stored on Google servers.

Netvibes had the most promising sounding solution until it was unveiled: promising you could develop once, deploy everywhere. In reality, you could jump through a series of hoops to port the simplest widgets to a specific UWA widget for Google desktop and Apple Dashboard; bringing back the old 2 stage download, make that 3 stage for PC, along with and giant Netvibes logo on your widget.

Solutions:

The more people who jump on board making platforms rather than solutions, the further from realistic it is to release a quality widget product. The WC3 has outlined some standards, but the engine developers don’t seem to be listening. Simplification and standardization are really the key.

For now the widget landscape is in it’s infancy. Development is limited to small pockets of users bases. Widgets will continue to do less-than-useful tasks such as count down to a date and read .rss feeds. For a company to seriously consider using a widget as a major brand touchpoint the widget platform needs to be transparent to the user.

Links:

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/sidebargadgets.mspx
Apple - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/
Google - http://desktop.google.com/
Yahoo - http://widgets.yahoo.com/
Netvibes - www.netvibes.com
Netvibes UWA - http://dev.netvibes.com/
apple Netvibes widget - http://developers.netvibes.com/files/UWA-Widget.wdgt.zip
WC3 - http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/