I've been doing some editing of the Wikipedia definition of 'web widget'. It's fascinating to watch this definition evolve almost in realtime. The entry didn't exist a week ago and various hands are helping to make it a success. I felt as it stood today it was somewhat misleading and didn't reflect the basics of web widgets. Before editing, I had to pursuade myself that I knew what a web widget was.
To be a web widget, this thing has to be:
1. embeddable within, and serveable with, an html based web page
2. portable
I had some stuff about how it had to 'do something' and be 'available to the public' but then I realised that these really had nothing to do with whether this thing is a web widget.
The current definition on Wikipedia was:
A Web Widget is a portable software application, or module, that can be installed and executed within one or more separate browser-based (ex: Internet Explorer, Firefox) content aggregation platforms (ex: MySpace, Blogger (service), Netvibes) by an end user (computer science) without requiring additional compilation. Other terms used to describe a Web Widget include Gadget, Badge, Module, Capsule, Snippet and Flake. Web Widget applications are usually created by software developers using the Adobe Flash or JavaScript programming languages.
I had a few problems with this. 1. doesn't have to be an application, 2. is not really anything to do with 'content application platforms', 3. who are these 'end users', we are people, 4. if they aren't applications, then they aren't usually created by software developers, and 5. surely not just Flash and javascript.
OK, I over egged it a bit, it's quite a good starting definition. But it seems to speak only to one view of what a web widget is, a very technical, application, executable view. And as I've said before, my belief is that anything can be a web widget. This isn't just a contrarian view or a plea to loose controls. I think it is important for how we think of what web widgets are and what their place may be in the future of online life. I would suggest that most widgets are created at the moment by individuals using someone else's widget engine. Flickr's badge creator, for example. Is that a web widget application and if so, what was it written in? But for my purposes, it is the thing that I get by using it that is a web widget, the code that I embed in my site. So we have category confusion as well.
So by now I reaslise that this thing we are talking about isn't really anything much at all but a bit of code that you put in your page and it does something. Oh, and the key word from the definition above is portable. So now it reads:
A Web Widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate html-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are akin to plugins or extensions in desktop applications. Other terms used to describe a Web Widget include Gadget, Badge, Module, Capsule, Snippet and Flake. Web Widgets often but not always use Adobe Flash or JavaScript programming languages.
The entry needs a lot more examples of widgets, something I can't face tonight.
Another issue that I've left alone for the moment is this:
Personal host sites
Many Start Pages have directories complete with listings and references to widgets that work with their respective platforms. Some examples are listed below.
Although personal host sites and start pages have widgets, they are not portable between systems. So are they web widgets? Let's think about it.
They are portable, actually. Microsoft Gadgets can be run a number of places...
Posted by: Hooman Radfar | September 05, 2006 at 01:23 AM