Opera was holding another widget competition, this time for more desktop application type of widgets. I was working on a widget as well, but sadly did not have enough time to complete it. Part of this was due to problems that I ran into in development. The widget was going to be an easy to use diagram editor. I managed …
I wrote a Sim City clone in JavaScript
This is why I haven’t been updating lately: I have been working on a Sim City clone, written purely in HTML, CSS and JavaScript! The game is called WidgetCity, and I’m participating with it in the Betavine Widget Competition 2009. The game was designed to run in Opera Widgets mode, but it also works in Firefox – only downside is …
Common widget design patterns
I’ve worked on quite many widget projects, and very often they have certain patterns that keep appearing. I’m calling these “widget design patterns” – let’s take a look at a few.
Developing for smaller screens
As of late, I’ve been working on developing a widget that runs on both PCs and mobile phones, for Opera’s X-Widgets Challenge. The widgets for the challenge must work on a QVGA (320×240) screen, and that presents certain challenges. For example, as the size of the widget is so constrained, you need to think what is absolutely necessary – does …
Cross-device Opera Widgets challenge
Opera has launched another widget competition: The x-widget challenge. The goal is to make the best cross-device widget – this means the widget has to work on mobile phones running Opera Mobile 9.5, which supports widgets, and in Opera on your computer.
Ext JS impressions
I’ve lately been using Ext JS in a project. Ext is basically a big JavaScript UI framework – like their site says, “a foundation you can build on”. It comes with various interface widgets like Windows, tabbed panels, accordion panels, menus, toolbars and forms to name some. It also has various other things such as nice Ajax tools. But what …
The future of browser widgets
My definition of a widget: a small web application inside your browser. Opera has had widgets for a while now, and I’m sure Firefox has a plugin which provides similar features. But what is the future of widgets? I’m a widget developer – I have made quite many widgets and even made money with them – yet I don’t even …