Application Gadgets
In the software industry, "Gadget" refers to computer programs that provide services without needing an independent application to be launched for each one, but instead run in an environment that manages multiple gadgets. There are several implementations based on existing software development techniques, like JavaScript, form input, and various image formats.
- Further information: Google Desktop, Google Gadgets, Microsoft Gadgets, and Dashboard software Apple Widgets
The earliest documented use of the term gadget in context of software engineering was in 1985 by the developers of AmigaOS, the operating system of the Amiga computers (intuition.library and also later gadtools.library). It denotes what other technological traditions call GUI widget—a control element in graphical user interface. This naming convention remains in continuing use (as of 2008) since then.
It is not known whether other software companies are explicitly drawing on that inspiration when featuring the word in names of their technologies or simply referring to the generic meaning. The word widget is older in this context. In the movie "Back to School" from 1986 by Alan Metter, there is a scene where an economics professor Dr. Barbay, wants to start for educational purposes a fictional company that produces "widgets: It's a fictional product."
- Further information: Workbench (AmigaOS)
Read more about this topic: Gadget
Famous quotes containing the words application and/or gadgets:
“Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. He would wander around open-mouthed in this heaven of gadgets and commodities, provided only that there were ever more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that his neighbors were just a little less privileged than he.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)