On 24 Feb 2011, at 18:49, Tharindu Mathew wrote: > Thanks for the link Scott. Since it's a visual product, I would've just loved > to see what it looks like instantly rather than downloading, so I thought of > letting you guys know.
Yep, I agree > > I downloaded and fired up the server. I really liked the demos. It seems to > me at first glance that widgets are more flexible than gadgets. But i'm not > sure. So I'd like to ask a few questions from the Wookie community since you > guys are experts in the space. > > What are the pros and cons of widgets over gadgets? Can a widget do more/less > than a gadget? What use cases are better suited for gadgets and what for > widgets? Its an excellent question! Widgets and Gadgets have different origins, but converge in some common areas. OpenSocial gadgets originally were developed as a more open alternative to things like Facebook Applications - so externally-hosted applications embedded in social networking sites. This was based on iGoogle Gadgets originally. So a Gadget is a remotely-hosted website that is made available within another application. Widgets started up in W3C to create a harmonised spec for things like Apple Dashboard Widgets, Windows SIdebar Gadgets, Nokia Widgets, Opera Widgets, Konfabulator etc - so basically packaged web applications installed either in a desktop environment or a mobile device. However it became clear early on that the W3C spec was generic enough to be used in wider range of contexts, and so we started work on Wookie to enable their use in websites; several other groups also came to the same conclusion and did the same in their products. Today they are also used for other things too, like Opera Extensions. One advantage of Widgets is that they are already compatible with mobile devices using a "widget runtime" (WRT) such as Obigo or Opera WAC for Android. They can also be fully offline applications. An advantage of OpenSocial is the APIs for connecting with friends lists and other social networking features. It also suits hosted apps rather than installed apps - so you can update a Gadget by changing the code on your website. (A disadvantage for the user is that this means if the server the gadget developers uses for hosting the gadget has a problem, you lose access to it.) At the moment, there is an overlap between Gadgets and Widgets - so for example, we decided early on to also enable Wookie to integrate with Shindig so that users could use both types of Widget/Gadget and not have to make a choice between them (see http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/integrating-wookie-with-shindig.html) We also consciously adopted some of the design conventions and terminology from Shindig into Wookie to make it less confusing. Personally I think the Widget/Gadget distinction will eventually fade away. In the meantime, Wookie and Shindig communities can work together to make it less of an issue for the user, who typically just wants the choice of the best apps for their platform and the freedom to use them in a range of contexts (including mobile) rather than worry about competing standards or incompatible technologies. At the recent OpenSocial event in the Netherlands it was also discussed whether the OpenSocial "core gadget specification" (the XML format used in Gadgets) might in future be harmonized with W3C Widgets, and we started some discussions of what would be needed - there isn't a lot of difference at a basic level of things like metadata and packaging, and W3C Widgets could be extended to handle remote as well as local app content. It is also possible to use the <feature> element to include social APIs in W3C Widgets. I'm not sure if the time is quite right to make this happen, but we have at least started the conversation. PS You might also find this post I wrote recently useful in picturing the overall standards landscape: http://scottbw.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/web-apps-a-snapshot-of-the-standards-landscape/ > I hope you won't mind these dumb questions from a new user. Not at all, its the right kind of question. > > On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Scott Wilson > <[email protected]> wrote: > On 24 Feb 2011, at 07:03, Tharindu Mathew wrote: > >> The url I used : http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/widget-demo.html > > Thank you for letting us know Tharindu, we should get it up and running again! > > In the meantime, if you download the "standalone" release candidate then you > can try Wookie out very simply on your computer by running "start.bat" or > "start.sh": > > http://people.apache.org/~psharples/wookie/staging-area/0p9p0/org.apache.incubator.wookie-standalone-RC-0.9.0-20110203.zip > > It uses an embedded web server and database so there is nothing else to set > up. > > S > >> >> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Tharindu Mathew <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I wanted to get a taste of the wookie project and clicked on your demo but >> it returned "resource not available" pages. >> >> I hope I can see the demos soon :) >> >> -- >> Regards, >> >> Tharindu >> >> >> >> -- >> Regards, >> >> Tharindu > > > > > -- > Regards, > > Tharindu
