Ten Sins of the Widget makers

It amazes me that, despite all the love and attention that is put into widgets, most widget producers don't seem to pay much attention to the needs of their customers - the widget users.
My experience last week with Jobboard widgets almost drove me to distraction - how could these horrible things be allowed to exist?

1. It's just big, that's the way we made it, our designers love it.

2. Sorry, you can't choose a colour.

3. We're going to put our logo and our name in it. And also under it

4. You can have it long and short or tall and narrow, but not short and narrow.

5. Oh, we just can't be bothered to let you resize it unless  you want to hack the code (YouTube)

6. We put everything in the code, so if you want to change anything, come back and get another copy.

7. Nope, you can't change the heading.

8. Look, every part is necessary, you don't get to pick and choose (MyBlogLog)

9. Didn't realise that the speed of our servers would now affect the speed of your site loading, sorry.

10. Look, the whole point is that we get to slap our huge logo on everyone else's work (Google Web Gadgets)

OK, most of these are caused because the widget designers don't seem to think about what the end user might want. They are making lovely sexy flash widgets, but for some reason they seem to think space in the sidebar is infinite, or that the user won't mind that the widget clashes with their carefully wrought design. Even Google's Adsense, which works so well in terms of design, won't let me specify the precise size for any ads - so I end up with ad blocks that don't relate to everything else in the sidebar. Or, if you think rounded corners are lovely - how about also offering square corners for those sites that don't want to shock the system (Musestorm score good points on this point).

So come on widget designers, get your acts together. Be proud widget designers. Write guidelines and conform to them. Ask the end users what they want and deliver it. Don't get carried away with your technical excellence - think about the product.

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Comments

[don synstelien]

Great list!

If you don't mind me taking up some space on your blog, I'll do a quick self test of SpringWidgets and see how we fare. Please tell me if I've answered incorrectly:

1. Check - Our RSS reader *can* be as small as 160x160

2. Check - RSS can be re-colored Countdown can be completely re-skinned, almost all widgets that SpringWidgets builds come with some kind of customization.

3. We have just this last week added a logo under our widgets... You should have written this post sooner ;-)

4. Check - Tall, Short, wide, square... You choose.

5. Check - Any way you like it up to 999 x 999 pixels. All configured though a constantly improving interface on our "share it" page.

6. Check. Click on the "get this widget" and all you parameters are passed into the widget "share it" page where you can modify your current widget. (you will of course have to re-embed.

7. Check - We have no widget "heading" but we do have a header graphic - You can change the header graphic.

8. N/A for SpringWidgets (I think) - though we try and be as configurable as we can be.

9. Check, and our servers are built to handle the pressure. Though there will always be a lag on a page with a half dozen widgets... even if they are simple ones from a very fast server. The more requests that a page needs to be complete, the longer the load time.

10. Hey, there was already a logo question ;-)

----

Finally, you are right. It's ultimately not about the widget makers, but about the people who use our widgets.

My team tries to listen to every single person who contacts us. Personally responding whenever we can.

Again, great list. I would love to see more uniformity in features like re-sizing and custom colors become standard. Widgets on our platform have these features automatically available to widget developers if they choose to use them.

Thanks for continuing to provide an interesting read.

-Don

[Ming]

That's a great list and we agree with every point. Unfortunately, we fail to address every one of those ourselves... But, we try...