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Google Adds Widgets to Homepage
Panaphonix writes "Google announced that their personalized homepage now has an API for developers to add their own modules. Samples are available in this directory."
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"and (I assume) Microsoft."
Not only do you assume correctly, Microsoft is going to allow their widgets to work both online (live.com - gadgets, and start.com - startlets, more (microsoftgadgets.com gadgets here) but on the user's desktop as well once Vista is released. Perhaps these gadgets will even share the same code and can live on both the desktop and live.com simultaneously.
Google didn't use the word widget, I don't know why /. keeps posting references to Google Widgets, which don't exist. They're simply personalized homepage modules. Regardless, one use of the word widget has come to be small open applications running on a shared platform. So even if they did use the word widget, they wouldn't be redefining it.
I've had success with a firefox based browser and adblock plus (for those ads on digg) you might want to check that out.
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
Well, I was just trying to copy the trend. I was hoping someone would rebuttal me with Konfabulator. (hence the winking)
I must admit, there are a bunch of advantages of having these hosted on a server. First, Google gives you a method to easily request webpages (so you don't have to worry about the quirks of every browser). Also, they forward all requests through their server, which has the added advantage of caching the requests. The script I wrote is pretty slow because it has to bounce around a few servers and compile a bunch of data, but Google caches it, so it'll last for a few hours, reducing traffic and making users happier.
When playing around with it, I came to admire the system they have in place to make sure the widgets don't interfere and there are no namespace issues. Each widget is assigned an ID, so you just put some code in there which is replaced at load time with a number. You put this in every id and function name, and then there are no problems. In my other post I wail on them, but it is actually quite clever.
Andrew
Well, fortunately for the rest of us, you're not the final arbiter over the usage of the word widget.
According to Webster:
Apple uses the term widgets to define the components in it's dashboard application.
Hello, if you go to you personal page here on Slashdot, you'll find:
Over time widget has come to be a placeholder for actual objects (in examples of economics for example), any gadget, and it has also come to mean "small, componentized pieces of code".
Googles use of the word widget is consistent with currently accepted usage of the word. They haven't arbitrarily redefined it. They haven't even used it in a new context.
Get over it. It's not your word exclusively.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Should have included the URL for the site :
weather.gov
But with python you can learn the rest of the language and completely ignore the OO stuff until you've learnt the core language, and that's how I teach it. And yet, when you come to use it, the OO is in there at a very deep level. That's what's so great about it.
I am trolling
This was amazingly easy. I setup a Widget at: http://witendofi.com/widgets/witendoficard.xml
It is a Google IG version of the WiFi Cards we let users have (see grebowiec.net for an example, it is in the right sidebar).
I had this thing working in under 10 minutes. I like. I will be expanding this. The timing was perfect, I actually started on a Konfabulator widget for this just last night!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
The fact of the matter is, there is a language out there specifically designed for people new to programming to dip their toe in the water and learn some of the basic concepts like loops, conditions and variables without having to worry about memory models, pointers and header files.
Yes. That language is called PASCAL.
In all seriousness, BASIC is not the language that you want to instruct students with. More viable languages are ones that get a programmer accustomed to the syntax and flow of one of the more serious languages, or are those languages themselves. I learned to program in C++. You don't have to touch pointers in order to learn how to progam. They can be introduced later on, as an extension or feature of the language.
Better yet, teach the students to program using Java or C#. One of the best features of those languages is the simplicity, the verbosity of the compiler errors, and the immediate satisfaction of having something substantial when it is all said and done.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.