XWidgetSoft Forum

A good reason for avoiding using cores & doing it yourself in pure javascript (some may have seen my steampunk media player or the U-boat widget both of which use javascript to rotate the hands and perform other functions) is that the javascript code is often directly translatable into web widgets.

If the Xwidget engine does ever turn into abandonware (like the yahoo widget engine) then you may find yourself in the position of having a lot of widgets but nowhere to run them (all it takes is a little change in a future version of Windows and Xwidgets could simply stop working). To protect yourself from this, if your working functionality is achieved in javascript code rather than using Xwidget cores then you can create/convert to web widgets that work within the context of a browser.

I have a few widgets that are being converted by Harry Whitfield to run as web widgets at this moment. When I feel confident of the task then I may do the same to some other of my widgets. You may eventually start to see them appearing around the web...

This is the U-boat web widget running within a browser. It isn't just stuck on using Photoshop. It really is running in Firefox. It tells the time and switches from one face to another, the hands all turn and the buttons can be pressed. The rest of it remains to be done but it works.

You can see it operating here:

Thanks for the info, and this can be helpful for some people, but please explain me, 1st why a user should reproduce with the hard way all the functions that XWidget supports on its own without so much trouble. I'm sure that for the average user who wants to create or discover XWidget will be impossible to edit and understand this kind of script and especially your kind that is ported from yahoo widgets. 2nd why you continue to "scare" people and alarm them with this continous "Xwidget engine does ever turn into abandonware" or "find yourself in the position of having a lot of widgets but nowhere to run them"...
This is not true 1st because Tony working on it and 2nd after the last update from 1.8 to 1.9 he changed all the core tags so the program has perfect compatibility even with the old widgets and the widgets run without any problem from XP to win10.
About the cores, XWidget is unique and user friendly exactly from this reason. Because even a novice user can create a widget and no need to be a prof designer or write down more than 1000 lines of js for functions, like in yahoo widgets or rainmeter. I agree that XWidget needs some more features and bug fixes, but I suggest you to wait the v2.0 and not be so negative. You had a negative experience with the yahoo engine, but not necessary happens the same thing here.
And to be clear, this is my opinion first as a user and designer and then as a Mod-part of the XWidget team.

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No need to scare people - in fact you drawing attention to it is just as likely to do just as much... Having you focus on it though, I have the opportunity to say quite clearly that Xwidgets is currently abandonware due to Tony's absence from the site and forum, due to the lack of any new versions for couple of years and due to the absence of news for ages now. As soon as Tony comes up with something valid that might change but at the moment that's the way it is. I wasn't going to say this but as you've brought it up I'd say creating web widgets instead of xwidgets seems a much safer bet at the moment. In any case that is what I am doing as creating new Xwidgets is not currently on my task list for the future.

So, now the thread's a little derailed back to the point of the point of the original discussion.

The point of the thread (quite obvious and explained already) was to demonstrate that a Xwidget can be made to work on other environments but that can only be done without the use of cores that avoid using javascript to fulfil certain functions.

My U-Boat widget is a case in hand, it uses a ticking function which you yourself have wanted to use instead of the core. That functionality is achieved in javascript which is directly translatable to a web widget.

If one starts at the KJC's/Cannuckens original Xwidget version of the U-boat (very good but all cores and very little javascript) that could only run on Xwidget, then my own U-boat Xwidget used javascript to provide functionality that the core does not (smoother ticks on the second hand &c - KJC adopted it too). Then there is my Yahoo widget version that does everything that the Xwidget version does but purely in code. From this final yahoo version it has been possible to create a web widget.

Comparing one against the other gives a good understanding of the strengths and weakness of the two engines. The yahoo widget is elegant, uses re-usable javascript and can be used to achieve largely anything at the cost of a lot of scripting. The Xwidget engine does the heavy-lifting with a few cores but it does NOT promote use of industry standard javascript to do a lot of the central functionality. This is both good and bad depending upon your standpoint.

The use of desktop widgets is declining and it should be obvious to anyone that a good way to get your widgets out there is to have them running on as many platforms as possible. Web widgets run on all machines via the browser interface so it makes sense to think about targetting that platform.

The U-boat widget above is a good example of that conversion as this particular widget has undergone the conversion from Xwidget to web widget successfully, probably the only Xwidget that has done so (as far as I know). Jim, some of your widgets may have made the progression from the web to desktop but as far as I know none have gone the other way round.

You yourself could easily turn a few of your clocks into web widgets using the approach we have taken above. When it is complete I will copy a few more (perhaps) and the approach could easily be copied.