Widgets Of Worth, Widgets Of Mirth, In Widget Heaven.

Echo me with Frank. While I find most Dashboard Widgets not to be worth my time and effort, there are more than enough to fill a screen. Weather, stocks, comics, movie times, calculator, and others sufficient in quality and quantity to be useful.

Frank touches on the key value-- useful information in a single place. I have about a dozen Widgets running and one swipe of the mouse to a corner and all that info is right there, waiting, updated.

That is worthwhile.

I must say, seeing widgets being bashed all the time is a little odd.  Aside from the usual weather, movie times, sports and stock widgets, which now give me info at the press of a button instead of having to scour the web for these various tidbits, i also have a few other widgets that I have put to good use.

I have open two widgets, Amazon Album Art and Harmonic that display album art and lyrics of the currently playing iTunes song, and even search the internet to add them to the song if it happens to be missing them

Then, theres the useful translator widget, and the PEMDAS widget.  For both, instead of going to a translator website or opening a calculator application, i have quick access to solutions

Rounding out my list are the woot.com widget, which displays todays woot, and iStat nano, which gives me all of the information i need about my mac. 

Of course, theres the Widget Update widget to check for updates for these.  But i think the point is, the dashboard isnt meant to replace anything, as I can access to all of this information from different sources.  What the dashboard, and widgets in general, are meant to do is centralize the information.  Instead of going to 5 different places, I go to 1 in the morning to check on the status of the world.  And its all at the push of a single button. 

To me, thats productive

Just my $.02

Sorry, but I gotta chime in on this one. Most Widgets are pretty much worthless. For me. Probably so for most people. The real issue is ‘which Widgets are worthwhile’ to whom?

Some of my friends have football scoreboard Widgets. I do not. Why? It’s worthless to me. My cubicle mate says the gasoline price Widget is cool. I drive a Prius so I don’t worry much about the price of gasoline if there’s a nickel difference. He drives an SUV.

Different strokes for different folks.

“The Widget I want does not exist. That’s wholly separate from the ‘Most Widgets Are Worthless’ premise, if anything because that can be a perspective, opinion, point of view-- of one. So what? Deal with it.” has got to be the most amusing part of this latest one, especially in context of this: “I read the entire comment thread and a went back to read the article again.”

Let me see. I do not recall seeing anywhere an indication that I could not deal with the idea that the majority iif widgets were worthless. Oh, waiit, I even echoed the sentiment.

No, I specifically entered this comment thread because of the apathy of users. People want things, and when those things are not around, they often enjoy complaining about that fact, but all too often they aren’t willing to do anything to get it fixed.

I will withdraw from the field, but concede neither the battle nor the war to the one who fears the use of his or her real name. My comments on this article are, with this one, concluded, and my original comment remains standing.

Kim, if you are willing to let me know which papers you want those want ads from, send me an email. The interface could be kludgy, but we could have something for that up in a very short time. I expect that it could even be done with a tweaked Dashcode template, but I don’t use Dashcode, so I can’t say.

I read the entire comment thread and a went back to read the article again. My conclusion is pretty much the same. Most Dashboard Widgets are worthless. A few are worthwhile. Some are entertaining. Others may hold value, though nominal. Andrew, you threw down a challenge flag and someone picked it up. A and B have been answered. The fact that I may want a Dashboard Widget to perform a specific task not currently available in a Widget does not mean that my ‘want’ is wrong, and it does not mean I should develop the Widget myself or enlist the efforts of a Widget developer. It means what it means. The Widget I want does not exist. That’s wholly separate from the ‘Most Widgets Are Worthless’ premise, if anything because that can be a perspective, opinion, point of view-- of one. So what? Deal with it.

Not in the least. Consider locating the people who can code these things up (incidentally, there are a couple that dance pretty close to the first one, if you poke around a little, but they are only about two years old). I provided a web site in an earlier comment, noting that the forums there are good for finding widget developers.

Maybe it is just me (though I really doubt it, given the outlandish responses so far), but it seems that people want to reply here a lot without having read the entire comment thread.

I’d like to see a widget that edits HTML and CSS with a live web page preview. What? There isn’t one? There should be.

I’d like to see a widget that shows the Want Ads in various newspapers. What? There isn’t one? There should be.

I’d like to see a widget that shows menu items and table availabilities at my favorite restaurants in Des Moines. What? There isn’t one? There should be.

“Then I would ask why, when building widgets is so incredibly simple, any person proposing such a widget hasn’t done something about the lack of said widget.”

Uh, how about this? I’m proposing such widgets because I know they would be useful to me and others and I haven’t done anything about it because I don’t know how to code HTML or CSS or Javascript or whatever else is needed to create a widget.

I guess that takes care of ‘a’ and ‘b’, huh?

Cal, you’re right. I should have said most. However, I stand by my Tucker analogy: fuel injection, a compact instrument panel, a padded dashboard, air conditioning, rear engine, disc brakes, and many other things he included were, at the time, luxuries or absent. He died penniless? So did Philo Farnsworth, and Nikolai Tesla was in the same boat. If you prefer those analogies, take them.

I still ask anyone here to propose a widget that a) does not exist and b) should exist. Then I would ask why, when building widgets is so incredibly simple, any person proposing such a widget hasn’t done something about the lack of said widget.

Feel free to attack my examples, but doing so still fails to respond to my question, now posed three times on this thread, along with a couple times on others.

I do so love exposing red herrings.