Monday, March 14, 2011

Widgets, the newest computer thingie

Widgets are mini-computer applications that run inside and under the control of your browser.  Great idea, but what makes then different than the standard web page? Mainly the browser has better control over security when a frequently used web page is packaged as a widget. Normal web pages are restricted in the type of web documents they can acquire and display.

If a web page wants to load its elements from different web sites, that is restricted, to make the web pages more secure. Widgets change that a bit, because the user goes through a manual set up once with the widget, and the widget stays on the user computer from then on. Hence, security is checked out once during installation, and after the widget can access all the sites it needs to fulfill its functions.

Good thing, really, and not much extra work for the programmer. Our computer world will become a world of widgets that get specific information for us on demand.

Am I going to make widgets?  I try not to, preferring to reuse the widgets available.  But, somethings will require me to package widgets for distributions. I am still mainly interested in the data viewers, widgets which can be pointed at a file and they will make the best attempt to plot any data.  Google is hot on this and what they produce should be reusable.

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