PDA

View Full Version : Widgets, desklets, plasmoids?



hizaguchi
March 12th, 2007, 03:08 PM
Desklets have been around for a while, but it seems like all the major user interfaces are integrating some kind of desktop gadgets these days. OS X has that Dashboard thing that my wife has been drooling over for like a year and a half (she's got Panther, no widgets for her). Vista has that sidebar thing. KDE4 is making "plasmoids" part of the desktop. Compiz/Beryl has that screenlet plugin now. Opera even came out with browser widgets.

I just want to know why. I admit that some of them (cairo-clock, wow!) are very pretty, but does anybody actually use their widgets to provide a unique functionality? Or is there a purpose that is just naturally filled better by widgets than normal applications?

I don't ask this to diss the whole widget trend or anything, so please don't take me wrong. I just feel like the popularity of these little things is growing so quickly that maybe I'm missing something.

Super King
March 12th, 2007, 03:29 PM
You'd probably be hard pressed to find a widget/desklet/gadget that offers anything truly "unique." The real benefit to these things is that ideally each widget does some little basic job and does it the easiest way possible to make things more convenient. For example, in Vista I have Gmail checker and Notes gadgets. It's much quicker just to glance at the Sidebar or press a key to bring it to focus to see if I have new mail than it is to open a browser, enter gmail.com, and login that way. It's also much quicker just to jot down a quick note on the Notes gadget rather than opening up a text editor. Another example is weather: why go to Weather.com to check weather when I can have it right in front of me without doing anything.

sorcererx84
March 12th, 2007, 04:59 PM
Compiz/Beryl has that screenlet plugin now.
Screenlets is a standalone application, it is in no way a plugin of Compiz or Beryl. Screenlets can be also run with Xfce's built-in compositor and xcompmgr.

I use screenlets to read RSS feeds. There is no need to open Firefox/Thunderbird/Liferea for small feeds. The same with weather information and system info. Why should I open another application, when I could just have all the needed information on my desktop?

OffHand
March 12th, 2007, 05:13 PM
does anybody actually use their widgets to provide a unique functionality? Or is there a purpose that is just naturally filled better by widgets than normal applications?

I can check all the (for me relevant) technical information about my system with Conky.
It's merged with the background too so it doesn't take any space. No other app can do this as far as I know.

prizrak
March 12th, 2007, 05:15 PM
Some are useful. In my experience they are good on a desktop that will just sit there but suck on a laptop where you will most likely have a window open if it's on/open. On my work desktop I got Widgets (gotta use Windows :( ). One has weather, very handy since while the laptop also has weather it is set to weather by my house and work one is set to weather at work. I got system info, which is just nice to have handy, and I have Outlook calendar Widget that gives me a quick rundown of stuff w/o having to open Outlook.So they do come in handy and some stuff is very useful to have.

hizaguchi
March 12th, 2007, 05:37 PM
Hmm, I just use checkgmail to check my gmail from the system tray. I look out the window if I want to know the weather. I don't really think much about my system resources, and I tried using gdesklets for that once and it just depressed me. :) Maybe it's because I have a laptop, like Super King said. I can imagine having the weather handy being more useful on a desktop that's always running, so I could just glance at it in the morning or something. I really wish I could figure out a way to make them useful to me though. The Screenlets, especially, look really nice. :)