Yahoo widgets to beautify your desktop

Need a sight for sore eyes or do you just want to remove the eyesore that is Windows?

I wrote previously about Emerge Desktop as a replacement to the default Windows desktop. I have come across another tool to beautify your desktop, The Yahoo! Widget Engine.

To quote Yahoo:
“The Yahoo! Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator) is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Creating them is very easy too.”

The Widgets are self-contained packages that provide cool looking functionality for your desktop. I had used Konfabulator previously and just tried the Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.1.4 on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4.

See Ref0 for Emerge Desktop.

See Ref1 for Kofabulator/Yahoo! Widget Engine Wikipedia reference

How do Widgets work?

The Widgets run in the Yahoo! Widget Engine. Each Widget has a specific function e.g. check your CPU activity or check a specified email account for unread mail. Basically Widgets can do anything you could do yourself on your computer but can be configured and usually look pretty. Widgets can be made available at the touch of a button or placing them permanently on your desktop.

The Yahoo! Widget Engine provides a feature, called “Heads-Up Display”, that displays all open Widgets on top of the desktop by activating a hotkey (set by the user). This causes all Widgets to be brought to the foreground, and all other applications to be dimmed. Widgets can also be set to be displayed only in the “Heads-Up Display” mode.

So let’s get started by downloading and installating Yahoo! Widget Engine, then running some of the supplied widgets and some user created widgets from the gallery. I’ll probably cover creating a widget in another post.

Download Yahoo! Widget Engine

Download a copy of Yahoo! Widget Engine from the Yahoo site.

See Ref2a for The Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.1 download and Ref2b for Windows installation instructions

Install Yahoo! Widget Engine

Run the installer to set up the Yahoo! Widget Engine on your computer and follow the installation steps. When the installation is finished, make sure that “Launch the Yahoo! Widget Engine” is checked, then click “Finish.”

The recommended operating system to use is either Windows XP with Service Pack 1, Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or higher, or Mac OS X 10.3 or newer. You also should have at least 512 megabytes of RAM and a connection to the Internet for some of the widgets.

Try the Widgets

Then the Yahoo! Widget Engine Icon should appear in the Task bar. Right-click on it to bring up the menu options for downloading user created widgets from the gallery, opening widgets on your computer, activating the”Heads-Up Display”, setting global and Widget preferences etc. Download user created widgets from the widget gallery.

See Ref3a for The Yahoo! Widget gallery

The images below display a small selection of the default and user created Widgets that I tried. The widgets with the white labels are supplied when you install the Yahoo! Widget Engine and the widgets with the red labels I downloaded from the gallery. As you can see, my desktop is very busy, works well with my replacement desktop and I’ve had no issues doing my day-to-day tasks. I particulary like the Desktop Calendar, “Mini Series and “Compact Series” widgets. Let me know which are your favourite widgets.

Now we’re talking !

There is much more fun to be had with Widgets. Try them out for yourself and if you are really adventurous create your own Widget. If you do create a Widget, please let me know and I’ll try it. See the following references for further information, developing widgets and forums.

See Ref4b, Ref4c and Ref4d for background information, developer documentation and forums.

References

Ref0:Emerge Desktop project

Ref1:Wikipedia Kofabulator/Yahoo! Widget Engine

Ref2a:Download page

Ref2b:Windows Installation page

Ref3a:The Yahoo! Widget gallery

Ref3b:The old Konfabulator Widget gallery

Ref4a:Yahoo! Widget Engine Home page

Ref4b:Yahoo! Widget Engine History

Ref4c:Yahoo! Widget developer information

Ref4d:Yahoo! Widget Engine Forums

Ref4e:Yahoo! Widget Engine Blog

Technorati Tags: Yahoo! Widget Engine Konfabulator Widgets Desktop

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 19:30 and is filed under Dawn Ahukanna, desktop, freeware, software, technology articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.