Widgets
Widgets are the new generation advertisement tools developed by the companies that want to promote their products. The widgets have existed in various names from 1993 onwards. The first commercial attempt was by Microsoft by incorporating ( though as an optional item) in its internet explorer 4.0.
What this Widget actually does? These are goodies which promises some value of entertainment or information to the users and also serves to project the products to the masses. There are infact various types of widgets. Desktop, web-based, mobile based. Each one has its own features. Web-based widgets are those which people are commonly utilizing now-a-days, without knowing the technical name for it. Example is yahoo and google. you create a personalized page which shows various stuffs like Climate info, horoscope etc., each one of which is a widget. This does not occupy or consume much of your resource as they are part of a large program and no excessive storage other than the usual cache and temp is utilized.
Desktop based widgets are those that needs to be downloaded and everytime the system is started this runs in the background. This consumes memory and companies are working hard to minimize this requirement.
The third type is the mobile based which has not reaches its peak because of the inavailability of the support for Javascript and high level web-browsers. But Sun Java has showcased the Jphone concept in its recent workshop and can expect to hit the market at the earliest. The concerns are with repect to security as they make the ports open and system vulnerable to hackers and Trojans.
RSS - is also a type of widget but its a primitive one. If you would like to try using widgets in a safe way, try Opera web browser which comes with inbuilt widget service. For those who are interested more can refer to the article related to Widgets in "IEEE Computer Society" magazine July 2007 edition. Signing off for now. Will try and come back with other updates shortly.
What this Widget actually does? These are goodies which promises some value of entertainment or information to the users and also serves to project the products to the masses. There are infact various types of widgets. Desktop, web-based, mobile based. Each one has its own features. Web-based widgets are those which people are commonly utilizing now-a-days, without knowing the technical name for it. Example is yahoo and google. you create a personalized page which shows various stuffs like Climate info, horoscope etc., each one of which is a widget. This does not occupy or consume much of your resource as they are part of a large program and no excessive storage other than the usual cache and temp is utilized.
Desktop based widgets are those that needs to be downloaded and everytime the system is started this runs in the background. This consumes memory and companies are working hard to minimize this requirement.
The third type is the mobile based which has not reaches its peak because of the inavailability of the support for Javascript and high level web-browsers. But Sun Java has showcased the Jphone concept in its recent workshop and can expect to hit the market at the earliest. The concerns are with repect to security as they make the ports open and system vulnerable to hackers and Trojans.
RSS - is also a type of widget but its a primitive one. If you would like to try using widgets in a safe way, try Opera web browser which comes with inbuilt widget service. For those who are interested more can refer to the article related to Widgets in "IEEE Computer Society" magazine July 2007 edition. Signing off for now. Will try and come back with other updates shortly.
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