KDE 4 to Support Apple Dashboard Widgets

Ryan writes to tell us Applexnet is reporting that Zack Rusin, a lead developer of KDE, has confirmed that KDE 4 will be able to run and display Dashboard widgets similar to Mac OS X 10.4. From the article: "Basically, this means that a layer (similar in some ways to layers in Adobe Photoshop) in the KDE desktop could function the same way that Dashboard does in Mac OS X. Widgets themselves are not inherently difficult to write nor properly interpret, since they are usually just HTML and Javascript (although Cocoa code can be included, the developer's skills permitting). Furthermore, since Konqueror and Safari share very nearly the same rendering engine, KHTML and WebKit, this too will simplify the process."

Comments

A possible merge in store, perhaps?

[hahafaha]

Apple already took a lot from UNIX. It pretty much *is* UNIX. Perhaps it will lend something to KDE.

Most UNIX-people use Apple because it still is UNIX but with a better GUI. Perhaps KDE will convince Apple to make the GUI Free Software.

Or maybe Apple will just sue the socks off of the KDE project.

Re:I just don't see the point

[Bralkein]

Well things in the style of the OSX dashboard widgets can be useful too. In this interview, Zack Rusin (the guy mentioned in the summary for this article) talks briefly about OSX-style eye-candy in KDE4, and he says that they want their interface to be useful as well as good-looking. If you still don't want the useful magic eye-candy thingies because you think they're too heavy on resources or annoying or whatever, then you'd probably be better off not using KDE anyway. You could just use XFCE or Fluxbox or something like that instead. You'd still be able to run apps from KDE or GNOME or whatever, but the DE would be more minimal.

Who knew that open source would be beaten

[ShatteredDream]

I hate to break it to you, but Java beat them by a wide margin a long time ago. Java has been able to do the write once, run anywhere since around JDK 1.2. Yes, you still need to do testing on platforms you plan to officially support, but the big difference is that Sun has made incredible strides in making Java that reliable on all officially supported platforms.

Now, as a Java developer I see nothing wrong with this and even see a good place for Java in the development of widgets. It's an easy language to pick up and you have the applets concept which was the first attempt to create something similar to widgets. All things considered, Java is an asset, not a competitor, for widgets.

Re:Superkaramba

[10Ghz]

SuperKaramba, Kicker and the Desktop are going to be merged in to one coherent whole in KDE4 called Plasma. These widgets and related technologies will be part of Plasma. So, in KDE3.x, we use SuperKaramba to handle widgets like these. In KDE4, it will be handled by Plasma.