XWidgetSoft Forum

Tony.

This email to is to formally request that you make Xwidget engine open source.

Can you please take this action in order to keep "your baby" alive.

At the moment it is dying. The site has malware warnings from all the major browsers and some anti-virus engines. There are multiple copies of the old installation circulating with the bundled malware.

Someone needs to take all this in hand and to start the whole Xwidget scene from scratch.

If the engine becomes open source and you can hand the management of the Xwidget domain over then we can see what we need to do to fund the hosting via donation and then in time we can restart coding using volunteers.

Your engine is the last Javascript widget engine and without your support it WILL die.

My suggestion is that you put the source code on sourceforge and then allow us to build a new website on the existing domain. We will retain the gallery of course. We can then look at the hosting bandwidth and costs and see what can be done to contact all the major browsers to prove that the malware is no longer contained within Xwidget downloads.

The first step is to declare yourself on our side and to do so on the website forum. Then you can become the founder of the Xwidget group that controls the Xwidget engine. As the founder you can then keep Xwidget as "your baby" and see how the community takes off. It will take a while but it will be worth it as Xwidgets is very important being the only remaining RAD widget tool.

Please get in contact with myself, Digigamer or Jim King, I am sure there is enough of a community to take XWidget forward.

I hope you understand that my actions are in support of "your baby" - it is too good to die and I see it dying the way that the yahoo widget and other engines all died.

I'm willing to donate to help compensate for his time and effort in putting it all together.I'm sure others are as well. I too want it to live on.

Thanks for that.

I am in touch with Tony and the matter is under discussion. If we can get a 'real' community involved, a team of people working together we can sort the engine's problems out (malware, news, progress, site and forum updates &c) and then we can start to make real progress. Tony is developing version 2.0, he just isn't good at doing all the rest that needs to be done.

He now needs to accept our help. However in order to get that commitment from the community he needs to make the engine open source, we will then all know that what we are contributing will become a part of core Xwidget.

At the moment we don't have that assurance and so it stifles contribution.

I sent this letter to Tony today:

"Tony,

You MUST take this issue seriously.

You MUST make the xwidget open source. You must do it NOW.

If you don't do it then Xwidgets - your baby is DEAD.

The site is already being flagged as hosting malware.

Major anti-virus engines are flagging the xwidget executable as being malware itself.

You need to open the code to make it open source so that it can be audited independently so that everyone can see that it is completely free of malware.

I tried to warn you about this right from the very beginning but Xwidgets is now virtually dead. All your coding for Xwidgets 2.0 will be wasted. Please, make Xwidgets open source NOW, hand over running of the site to the community and allow it to help you. Without this help Xwidgets is dying. It is happening now. Xwidgets is going through its death throes. Please ACT NOW!


END

I know that Tony and the community have now fixed the a/v engines and browsers seeing the site as hosting malware (WORLD! this is all fixed now!)

So the next step is to help Tony create a community that is involved in the development of Xwidget, could be site administration, marketing, answering forum queries, documentation, coding new cores. Note that this is all the stuff that isn't happening.

Tony, you need to get the community on your side and get them to help. First thing would be create a developer's blog and start letting us know what you are doing and how it is progressing.

https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/bbs.xwidget.com/
and http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diag ... widget.com

Both show safe now which is excellent news.
Well done Tony and I'm sure visitors will start coming back

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Cheers, Pete

fully agree.
I was just saying that now that there are no more virus warnings at least people will not be put off.
Of course we still need a new updated version of Xwidget. I am patiently waiting just like you.

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Cheers, Pete

Righto Pete, sorry to misunderstand.

I just want so much from Xwidgets and it is frustrating...

hi guys, i been waiting for Xwidget v2 for maybe a 2.. 3 years? i truly cant remember since it feels like 4 ever, i try to periodically check its status, but nothing seem to have changed, very little forum activity, no updates yet, no news regarding v2.. its like xwidget is in a limbo, yereverluvinuncleber is right, Xwidget is dying, many would say is dead already..but dead and all, still has the potential to be the best desktop widget tool for developers, it still can be done, at least that's how i feel, if money is the issue contributions can be made, bitcoin donations perhaps? but it needs to be open source, people need to be able to build and improve on it, anyways.. hope it all sorts out for the good, its not too late..

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"If it's true that our species is alone in the Universe then i'd have to say the Universe aimed rather low.. and settled for very little"
-George Carlin

I have decided that despite my recent flirtation with a series of Panzer Xwidgets - just to test the water - I will be creating no more Xwidgets as it makes no sense to do so. Widgets are not as popular as they used to be. Xwidgets has a bad reputation and this community? Well, it IS dying.

In the current model of Windows, widgets are an unfashionable and unwanted component of the desktop and Microsoft will be doing away with the traditional desktop over time as they merge the desktop and tablet experience under continuum - see the death of Google/Windows Vista style gadgets, opera widgets &c and determine their popularity yourself. Widgets are not the "in-thing" at the moment.

With Tony's lack of interest in the community I see no reason to put faith in Xwidgets as a product for advertising our skills.

I will be making no more widgets in general, no more Xwidgets, that is for certain, unless something changes that makes a fundamental change to the environment that we work/play in. I just don't see the point anymore.

I use it for a variety of small things that are niche and not really for public use but I do use it. For work, for example, I have to write up detailed notes for each customer I work with that follow a certain format. Rather than waste a lot of screen space with another oepn browser, I can make a nice, aesthetically pleasing notes application with Xwidget that takes in the various pieces of info I have to key in (Customer name, acct # etc) and have it assemble me a complete note which I can copy / paste. The ease of making a quick GUI in the designer plus the ability to extend it with custom javascript makes it quite handy. I, and other users I'm sure, will still find use for it.

I do wish Tony would either update or open source it. MS may have its vision but I suspect the desktop will be around for a lot longer than people suspect.

I'd like to believe that. The trouble is that MS have to do something drastic to create that missing MS product in the tablet space. They have failed spectacularly with Windows RT and Windows Phone. With Apple seemingly about to push hard into the desktop space they need to pull something out of the bag. Profits and their space as the no.1 o/s are under severe threat.

I am watching widget downloads drop dramatically as Windows 10 determines the direction graphically for Windows. There is no point in having two desktops, one for tablets, the other for desktops, just one that reacts according to the device being operated. That is Continuum... They WILL coincide more and more. There is no space for widgets in that approach. They may not even be able to operate in that space. The other obvious main reason for the lack of interest is that the ipad and IOS is literally taking over - with Android following conceptually in its wake.

Widget engines are no longer even vaguely in vogue, all have closed down or are dormant (Xwidgets) and no-one is creating another, Xwidgets without an update is really as good as dead for general use. I am genuinely very pleased you find it useful for yourself and in that way it will continue to have a very small niche future. I already have the Konfabulator engine that fills that role for me, I don't need to take on another dead engine.

Tony killed Xwidgets. Killed it as good as dead by all the shennanigans with malware over a period of years, the on/off site/forum, the complete lack of presence on the forums, no releases in years and appallingly no word at all on what is going on. Worst of all, a failure to realise that open-sourcing and community involvement is the only thing that could keep Xwidgets going in his absence...

One last release, if it ever happens, will be the final gasp for air - it had better be a big one...

FYI - I just did this comparison for:

xwidget
konfabulator
yahoo widgets
Rainmeter
windows gadgets

This shows the current trends on google related to the above keywords, it shows that xwidget barely even made it off the ground... except for a brief period in 2013, it also shows the general trend downward with regard to widget trending.

Its a shame, I've used Rainmeter, in fact it was my fav widget dev program till i found xwidgets and realized its potential, since then Ive been using xwidgets and frankly dont feel like changing.. i dont get why would someone let his creation die like this..i guess there is a refusal to scale for fear of losing control? scalability is always crucial, tony should have involved more people back in 2013 when the xwidget community was growing.. anyways, call me naive, im still waiting for a mind-blowing V2

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"If it's true that our species is alone in the Universe then i'd have to say the Universe aimed rather low.. and settled for very little"
-George Carlin

Before make this comparison for XWidget and the rest programs especially for Rainmeter we need to check one important thing. That the first version of XW appeared on 2011
http://www.xwidget.com/ver.html
instead of Rainmeter that was on 2001!
https://docs.rainmeter.net/history/
And Yahoo widgets are even older if I remember well.
So the publicity and the number of users that use these platforms cannot be compared..
And as I saw from all this time that I use and make widgets from XW, many people didn't even know about it.
Let's hope that Tony will give us soon the v2.0 that will be a big upgrade in all aspects.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4098
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4298

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...and remember: don't take life too seriously...
My profile on Deviantart: http://jimking.deviantart.com/

I think the important thing that graph tells us is that interest is waning all things widget and that in relation to all the others, interest in xwidgets never really got off the ground. It could have been different but releases and information were required to maintain any credibility in relation to the other offerings and we never received any. As well as that malware in the installer - as a result it never really got off the ground. It may be technically good in some respects but it is a largely a dead horse we are flogging... There isn't much point.

Regardless of any release, whether it comes or not, it won't make any difference, it is too late for that.

It will continue to have a niche usage for a few for desktop mini-apps but the only way for Xwidget to recover any popularity will be to provide more functionality on Android.

What Xwidgets MUST become is a credible cross-development environment from Windows to Android - making Android apps (not just clocks and battery gauges) but functional gesture-based rich applications - This is the only way version 2 can recover some sort of popularity in the future.

I came to Xwidget because it had a good graphical skin editor and creator which Rainmeter doesn't, I was used to Samurize which came before Rainmeter and did. This has been a very useful program for me and I will be irritated if it just ups and dies because Tony just let it wither on the vine.

I think you'll always be able to use it for yourself at least until MS finally ditches the desktop but I suppose that will not be for a while, it should be OK for the foreseeable future but that could change at any time as MS needs to change Windows to compete with the tablets.

I have a friend who does javascript development for desktop and the web who uses a similar widget engine for the desktop. His widget engine has just stopped working (on the Mac) as the o/s has had a small change to security and the widget engine simply will not run anymore.

He can no longer market any of his widgets on the desktop of his choice. That sort of shift can happen at any time. The engine needs to be supported on the o/s of choice (and that means regular updates) and the users need confidence that it will be supported in the future otherwise they will drift away.

Alternatives:

1) You will have ReactOS when that matures and the xwidget engine engine will run there - eventually. ReactOS will be just like Windows, almost identical.
2) If you keep an older version of Windows that runs Xwidgets as a safety net then for your own personal use it will always be there. I keep an XP system for a lot of older software that is really very good but does not run on NT6 (Vista +).

That's personal use largely sorted, the trouble is I want my widgets to be used by others. The graph shows that widget use is declining, interest has largely waned. I am seeing the same with the number of downloads, they are falling. I used to receive 1,000 per day per widget. Now I'd be lucky to get 150 per day for the lot... With the general decline in interest in widgets, without an update and without visible support Xwidget is virtually dead. Xwidget has to be seen to be supported and not just with a release once every two years.

If Tony had open-sourced this project two years ago we would all be running with this engine, producing widgets like Jim, helping out with the website, writing news and press releases, adding new functionality to the site. Xwidgets would have a rosy future. What will one release do now? I suspect not much.

I think of it this way. Tony's involvement in Xwidgets reflects the general interest from the world in widgets, if Tony thought it was worth his while then the new version of Xwidget would have been out a long time ago. It isn't worth his while nor his time and it is a massive job. My guess is (and this could be quite wrong) that we won't receive an update for months yet, if ever.

Not to mention this community has developers who ARE WILLING TO CONTRIBUTE

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Life is a myriad game... Just play it!