Konfabulator: Whatever You Want It To Be

Squidgee writes "Arlo Rose, one of the developers who worked on Kaleidoscope, and the ill fated Eazel desktop environment for Linux, has come out with another potentially Mac-shaking app: Konfabulator. Konfabulator lets you run any program written in XML/Applescript/Javascript (It's own little hybrid of all three) in its engine, seamlessly placing the app onto your desktop. Examples of such apps are: A CPU Monitor, a Multi-Clipboard tool, a weather monitor, a battery monitor, etc. It allows for easy developement, beautiful apps, and unlimited functionality."

Comments

what could it be used for?

[tunesmith]

Right now the widgets are a waste of desktop space. What is so special about this in terms of the actual technology? What does it enable that would be worth the desktop space? What's better about it than a cocoa app? I mean, I can have a 256x256 cpu widget on my desktop, or a 16x16 menu item. I don't get it yet. Anyone?

Looks great, but why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please explain some of the reasons that one would want to use this application? I've downloaded it and looked at some of the other widgets, and it seems to me that this application is little more than some (very) pretty pictures. But little is gained from these tools, and a lot of screen space is needed. Apple's menu bar utilities provide some similar functionality that is much nicer.

So why Konfabulator?

Not Too Exciting

[owlicks58]

I used this about a week ago and the widgets aren't very exiting. It would be helpful if you could lock the widgets so they didn't move, but as it is now it's pretty useless, pretty much just windows floating on your desktop. I use Meteorologist (for weather), PTItunesnotifier (for itunes control), and MenuMeters (for RAM/CPU Usage) and those all go in my menu bar. The menu bar is a much better place for any of these apps because it can be seen globally... I don't spend a lot of time staring at my desktop, where these widgets would be.

Don't make summary judgements...

[grahamtriggs]

I totally agree that the current widgets in the gallery are not particularly useful - and nothing to make me want to buy it...

But the value of Konfabulator is not in those widgets... the value is in what might come in the future. The value is in what *you* write for yourself...

As an example, a colleague of mine has written his own widget for monitoring/restarting web servers...

What is special about it? Nothing much... What does it enable? People with some scripting skills, but not the ability to write Cocoa apps, an easy way of creating small pieces of functionality that are useful to them (if no-one else). What's better about it than a cocoa app? It allows many different pieces of functionality to be hosted in it. It allows creativity. It is an app with components, rather than a multitude of apps eating up menu / dock space.

No, there may not be any immediate value for you yet. There isn't for me. But Konfabulator should not be judged on what it is... you should keep an open mind to see what it can become.

Re:Don't make summary judgements...

[grahamtriggs]

In answer to your points:

1) Doesn't particularly bother me... theoretically, it's not much different from having a widget on screen... and if it annoys me, I just pick it up and drag it off to the side so only a tiny, tiny fragment is visible...

2) But then you can lay the same argument against any tool... you could even say the same about a web browser, or even an OS... the more widgets, websites or applications, the more inherent value there is, and the more that can be earned by the publisher of the hosting environment, browser, or OS, without them doing anything in particular... they may only be making use of existing standards, and putting together a 'simple' framework for others to make use of, but it is their work, and they are entitled to benefit from it... if you think it's a worthwhile thing for the community, but they are charging too much for it, then develop your own version...

Although I do agree about retaining the rights to your own widgets... I'm not sure what the license specifies, but then you are free to not use it if you disagree with the terms...

3. JavaScript - maybe they want to appeal to website designers, who may already know JavaScript, but not Applescript... maybe they want the freedom to port the framework to other OSes at a later stage, and have existing widgets work (as much as possible)

Make programming accessible to novices again!

[dpbsmith]

I'm all in favor of easy-to-use, accessible programming systems, and I'm very much against the kind of snobbery that says "everything must be programmed in C++ 'because' that is the language that is correct for modern development.'"

But I don't quite see why this is a breakthrough or how it is dramatically different from any of a number of accessible programming systems. AppleScript Studio... REALbasic... Hypercard. (OK, I know Hypercard is pretty much dead... but it SHOULDN'T be!).

What would be a breakthrough would be a change in PHILOSOPHY.

If only Apple (OR Microsoft) to return to the philosophy of the earliest days of micros, in which an accessible, easy-to-use, elementary programming system WITH GOOD END-USER TUTORIAL DOCUMENTATION was bundled with every computer.

One of the saddest features of the evolution of microcomputers has been the progressive development of an elitist attitude. In the eighties, retirees would buy these PC things just to see what they what they were all about and days later would be bragging about something they had written in QuickBasic...

"Computer literacy" USED to mean the ability to write simple programs. Now, it just means the ability to memorize the meaning of Excel toolbar pictograms...

Re:Make programming accessible to novices again!

[Junta]

First off, I must say I'm not sure if bringing software development to the end user is really important these days. Back then, there wasn't really any efficient, practically free methods to distribute software, so if you didn't write it, you had to pay at least a bit to get a copy and go to some trouble to actually go get it. For trivial apps, competent end users could write it up quickly for themselves for less time and money than it would take to find and get pre-made software. Now, computers are far more pervasive, so the competency of the average user is reduced. Also, with the internet, "real" programmes release freeware that pretty much covers the needs people once wrote custom software to do, and google, freshmeat, and versiontracker make it extremely easy to find the right tool for the job.

All that said, of the platforms in use in homes, I would say Apple is doing the best job in the direction you want.

With MS, Visual Studio costs money, and the application and APIs are relatively difficult to use and grasp for a beginning programmer.

With Linux, the development enviornment is free, but even less newbie friendly. Sure you can get some decent IDEs and even some UI design tools for free.... *IF* you know where to look, but documentation is sparse. Adding to this, there is no well defined Linux 'platform' (or *nix platform). You can make pretty likely assumptions about the kernel and glibc... and assume X if graphical (other alternatives are there, but far from mainstream). Beyond that, things become less certain. Qt, GTK+, Motif/Lesstif, Swing, and others are possible, likely toolkits, and with less certainty you can develop with Gnome and/or KDE, or if you want to be daring, you can use a relatively exotic language binding and require that. It all *can* work together, but it is an intimidating set of choices to have to make for a novice programmer, especially one that doesn't want to alienate users by requiring some library they don't have.

OSX is just incredible. First off, compiler, headers, really nice IDE, all are free and standard (Project Builder). The platform is truly a complete platform and you can make use of any part of it without fear that an end user would lack the libraries required to run it. The API is quite elegant and straightforward. Additionally, there is one great factor that truly makes the sort of things an enduser would want to do very accessible. Interface builder. The hardest part to a novice programmer tackling simple problems is dealing with UI, and Interface Builder makes this so damn easy and the Cocoa framework really make it possible to abstract the code from the interface. Though Apple's applications are not open source, most everything an end user would want to do to them can be done through opening the .nib files in the resource bundle and going at it. My personal thing I tend to do is to make Address Book, iChat, Calculator, and Safari not use the damned Scratched Metal look. Without exposing code, users have a really easy to figure out way of modifying the Interface of Cocoa apps in drastic ways, and I think that is truly great.

Yeah it's true...

[thatguywhoiam]

I saw this at first and like many others went 'oooh' at the nice Quartz rendering, and the graphical quality of the widgets. Then I turned it off after about 5 minutes.

The problem with ideas like this (and don't get me wrong this is a nice implementation; it's the concept I have a problem with), is that they assume your desktop is going to be visible to you. In fact, that is not true very often in modern computing circumstances, as you are almost always running something that is taking up most of your screen.

After all, why wouldn't you? This is why we want big screens in the first place. Even if you're Aaron Sorkin and you have a 17" PowerBook, you're using that width to show two scripts side-by-side.

So the problem with Konfabulator is that, to access the widgets, you have to 'switch' to the desktop, which means its no faster than any other application you could switch context to. The desktop becomes an infinitely configurable tabla rosa, which is cool, but it gets hidden by whatever app(s) you're using regularly. (I find this is less of a problem on the Mac by the way. On my Windows machine at work I tend to maximize everything, but on OS X I always leave room around windows... anyways...)

Now, to take another Mac example, the top-right toolbar widgets. These, I love, and they are the real answer to Konfabulator-type flexibility. They are always visible and always 'live'. I mine alone, I have a CPU/Net monitor (Spy), the weather (WeatherPop), battery, Airport strength, Bluetooth status, iSync trigger, monitor rez, sound volume, and date/time. In a line appox. 15 pixels high. They may not be as lickable as Konfab's widgets but they are much more readily available, and easier to hit with the mouse (top-right corner, Fitt's Law mouse-flinging).

So you're back to Active Desktop, which no one uses. I think the context-switching is the reason.

One side-note.. the only really cool thing I want fron Konfab is the webcam feature. I really like the idea of placing borderless, floating webcam images around my desktop...

Re:Haven't I seen this somewhere before?

[GoRK]

Erm, no not really. Konfabulator is not that integrated. It's more like Active Desktop without a lot of the flexibility Active Desktop has. For instance, Konfabulator widgets cannot register file handlers or generally be loaded/unloaded on demand by the OS itself such as the OpenDoc modules could. Konfabulator widgets also cannot automatically update themselves with new code as it becomes available (unless of course it's implemented internally in the widget), unlike Active Desktop widgets which can.

And to the guy who said that this was more "Integrated" than Active Desktop, it's really not. If you put a local (d)html page on your drive in the "Local" internet "zone" (sorry bout the lame m$ terminology), scripts on the page can be given access to local resources they need to do anything these Konfabulator widgets could do. You can script active desktop widgets in VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, Python (Using ActiveState PerlScript/PythonScript), and using these languages access enough of the underlying API that you could easily put an entire little application in there (think PerlScript + Win32::GUI app in an Active Desktop widget)

Don't get me wrong; I hate Active Desktop and Windows and I think the entire idea of little desktop apps will be forever relegated to 'toys' and other useless crap, but I think Active Desktop is a superior implementation over Konfabulator because of automatic updating and scripting language flexibility. At least it has a better name and doesn't sound like it belongs in KDE.

~GoRK

Konfabulator: Considered HARMFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife sent me a link to Konfabulator. She had read a story about it in Wired and sent that to be. I went to the Konfabulator web site and it says is can be "whatever you want it to be." I figured this is some sort of IDE, so I downloaded it.

When you start it up, it says something to the effect of "I'll walk you through the startup." and then does a number of things WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. First, it creates a ~/Documents/widgets directory. It doesn't warn me about this until after it is done. Then it launches a bunch of mini-apps; again, it does not ask me if this is ok.

Futhermore, there was some text on the screen, with a "click here to continue" at the bottom. I couldn't see any standard controls to move the window, so I thought it didn't have focus or something, and clicked the window near the top left. Despite the fact this is nowhere near the 'click here to continue' the screen updates twice, and I miss a bunch of text, so I have no idea what is going on.

I ended up in a state where I had all these weird things on my screen, and no application in my dock/ This thing is running but I have no way to shut it down. I had to open Terminal to kill the app.

This thing breaks the entire Apple human Interface guidelines, it sticks applications in the users Documents directory which should never be done, and to add insult upon injury, it only runs clocks and stuff -- there is no way to write your own application that I could see.

Konfabulator: USELESS and HARMFUL.

Re:A cross platform operations tool?

[dmorin]

Well if you have to write its plugins in C, though, I'm not sure it's the same thing. I was under the impression that this Konfabulator thing allowed you to whip stuff up in an XML/scripty sort of language. The compile phase of C alone puts it in a different category than scripting languages.

Main value is integration of scripts

[illovich]

Konfabulator is an interesting thing, I think. Although most of the widgets are silly, I think it's mainly because everyone is trying it out and redoing the widgets thaty come with it (clock, to do lists, news aggregators, etc)

But it's main strength is that a developer can use applescript (or osascript) or javascript to make widgets. Given that via Applescirpt one can access the unix shell and most of the rest of the goodness under the hood of OS X, Konfabulator really has the potential to be a really nice cheap RAD for folks to make themsleves little system utilities.

The example of the server checker has been given. You can also write widgets to do whatever can be scripted on the platform, which is a lot. I've also seen a few widgets that run top every so many ticks and parse its output so that you have a readout of the 5 biggest processes. You could also write front ends for any command line utility in about 20 minutes, plus photoshop time.

Really once you see the software for it's underlying capability instead of the widgets that it comes with, you can see that it's really a pretty decent piece of ware.