Appendix A. WidSets

Web widgets are extremely popular nowadays. These little applications, composed basically of HTML, cascading style sheets (CSS), JavaScript code and, sometimes, Adobe Flash technology, allow live content from a web service to be displayed in other places, such as other HTML pages, desktop dashboards and, more recently, in mobile devices. Some of the most common web widget platforms today are:

  • Google Gadgets (www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets), which provides widgets that can be used on your desktop computer, on iGoogle (www.igoogle.com) and on your own web page

  • Yahoo! Widgets (widgets.yahoo.com), which provides widgets that can be used on your desktop computer

  • Windows Live Gallery (gallery.live.com), which provides widgets that can be used on your desktop computer, web pages, and a browser toolbar

  • Apple Dashboard Widgets (www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard), which provides widgets that can be used on your Mac OS X dashboard.

Widgets are responsible for a great boost in web application usage, since they allow users to use the web quickly, without having to open a browser, type in a URL and wait for the page to load. These mini-applications bring many web services directly to the desktop or to a single web page, making it fast and easy to look at the weather forecast, play a crossword puzzle or read the latest news from the major sites.

Greater availability of smartphones, such as Symbian OS devices, combined with the fast evolution in networks has caused Internet usage ...

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