Widgets framework

[pedro6893]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I couldn't find other threads on the subject.

I have followed Unity development in the last years and I must say that I'm satisfied with the ever-improving experience it has been delivering. However, one feature that has made it way into other OSs (and KDE) and that I can't find on unity is native widget support.

Unity has taken bulky UI out of the desktop, but I really wish I could use this freed screen space to display email, news, calendar, weather and such, just like one could easily do on Android.

I know there are solutions like conky or screenlets, but they are not part of the unity experience, and most average users probably won't even find out about them. This fragmentation additionally may make widget development much less appealing to developers.

If Canonical wants to deliver a desktop that adapts to users' needs and become a larger player on desktops and tablets (and this is specially true for tablets), I think that a framework for widget development is a must have for unity. This way we could ease widget development and have a nice end-user experience, with consistent widget behavior and configuration, or possibly a section devoted to them on the application center.

Are there any existing solutions or projects in this sense? Has this issue already been debated to any conclusion? has Canonical said something about it? Are there any plans to support widgets on future releases or on the Ubuntu SDK?