Types of Widgets
Because the term, and the coding practice, has been extant since at least the 1980s, it has been applied in a number of contexts.
A GUI widget is part of a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows a computer user to control and change the appearance of elements for operating a software application. In this context a widget may refer to a generic GUI element such as a check box, to an instance of that element, or to a customized collection of such elements used for a specific function or application (such as a dialog box for users to customize their computer screen appearances)
Disclosure widgets are specific types of widgets that may be hidden or expanded by computer users.
A desktop widget is a specialized GUI widget intended to run on a computer desktop for computer users to control simple utility functions such as clocks, messaging services, and calendars. A mobile widget is the comparable equivalent for mobile devices (i.e. smart phones).
A metawidget is a widget for controlling the operation of other widgets within a GUI.
A web widget is a portable application installed and executed, typically by non-expert webmasters on HTML-based web pages, to offer site visitors shopping, advertisements, videos, or other simple functionality from third party widget publishers.
A "widget application" is a third party application developed for an online social network platform, with the user interface or the entire application hosted by the network service. Social network companies such as Facebook and Myspace host these applications and provide them underlying platform services (such as display and storage of user-provided photos and other content, profile information about end users and communications features with other users) through special-purpose application programming interfaces. The term is used fairly loosely, in that many such applications are more complex internally and in operation than the simple applets that are called "widgets" in other contexts. The relationship between platform and developer is mutually beneficial, with the social network offering hardware and software infrastructure, and access to the social network's end user base, and with application publishers ranging from amateur developers to organized companies such as RockYou! and slide.com providing content and features that make the social network services more useful for their members. At present, there is no fee or payment between developers and social network platforms, and attempts to realize revenue from widgets (primarily advertising by the widget applications and sale of electronic commerce goods and services within the widgets) have been relatively unsuccessful.
A Widget toolkit is a set of programming tools that help developers design elements of a user interface.
Read more about this topic: Software Widget
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