Web Widgets Are Here!

News from Widgipedia: Web Widgets are here!

We have promised that we'd create the ultimate widgets resource, so today we've taken one step closer to this goal by merging the two worlds: desktop widgets AND web widgets are all together at Widgipedia.

We know you have waited for them impatiently, so please go ahead and, along with your favorite widgets on your desktop, place your favorite widgets in your web pages! It's a world of widgets, they are cool, they are useful and we love them smiling smiley

Thank you for asking us about web widgets, thank you for giving us great suggestions and feedback, thank you for waiting impatiently for this moment together with us - all these helped us more than you'll ever know in getting us here! As usually, we'd love to hear your comments and thoughts about the site!

OK, now let's see what let's see what you can find on Widgipedia starting today:

1. First of all... web widgets! Or online widgets, or blog widgets, or whatever you call them. They are hosted in our gallery together with desktop widgets and they are distinctively marked with the "Web ready" logo:

2. As a developer, to have your web widget available on Widgipedia, it's as easy as saying "upload, configure, done":

* just upload the code of your web widget (such as the HTML source or the Flash movie) at Widgipedia exactly as you would do with a desktop widget...

* ...then optionally specify some parameters for it in the next dialog...

* ...and you're done!

3. But there is more at Widgipedia than just a directory of widgets: we also host web widgets on our servers. You don't have to struggle finding a place to host your online widget, because we take care of this for you. You just upload the code of your widget as shown above and from that moment your users will get your widget directly from our servers.

We believe it's easier this way. And it costs you nothing smiling smiley

4. If you want to install to your own page a web widget that you saw at Widgipedia, it's as easy as saying "get, configure, copy":

* click the "Get Widget" button...

* ...if you want, configure the widget from the next dialog...

* ... then copy and paste the provided code into your web page and you're done!

5. To browse only for web widgets: use the links from the blue (left) bubble at the top of Widgipedia pages. To browse only for desktop widgets: use the links from the green (middle) bubble at the top of Widgipedia pages.

6. With the exception that web widgets are installed and desktop widgets are downloaded, we have tried at Widgipedia to have web widgets and desktop widgets look and feel as similarly as possible. For both categories you can give feedback, see the number of installs or downloads, browse, etc. Also, forum sections are available to share your thoughts, to find some answers for your questions or to talk about both categories of widgets.

You don't have to learn two worlds - there is just one with two flavours smiling smiley

Thank you again for staying with us and helping us build such a great widgets community!

Your Widgipedia Team

Post by Your Widgipedia Team on 01/16/2007 09:55AM 4 comment(s)

Adobe AIR at Widgipedia

Starting of today, Widgipedia supports widgets based on Adobe AIR (formerly known as Apollo) runtime.

It's a long time since we didn't post to this blog, but trust us guys, there are a lot of goodies that we've been working on in this time at Widgipedia and you'll see them very soon on the site!

For now, we're happy to let you know that we have added support for Adobe's AIR runtime. The support is available both for Windows and Mac platforms.

AIR is a runtime that allows you to run desktop widgets written in Flash. Or, more detailed, AIR is a cross platform runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop rich Internet applications. You can find out more about AIR at Adobe AIR site.

To upload widgets based on Adobe AIR runtime at Widgipedia, just open our upload widgets form and select one of the Adobe AIR platforms listed on the right side:

Thank you so much for loving widgets and for being part of our great Widgipedia community! More news to you soon, folks!

Your Widgipedia Team

Attachments: air.gif (32.3KB) Post by Your Widgipedia Team on 05/10/2007 06:33AM 4 comment(s)

Say Hello To Widgipedia Profiles

As of today, all our community members can have their personal profile page at Widgipedia!

We bet it's a nice surprise for you guys smiling smiley , and we wish to thank you so much for staying with us and helping our community grow!

As we said many times in the past, Widgipedia is so much more than just a widgets gallery: it's also a community of widget passionates, a place where people discuss, learn or teach about widgets - no matter if they are developers or widget users. Through the addition of the profiles, we want to offer our community members a way to better know each other, to our developers a way to become known to the community, to our users a way to show who they are, what they like or to ask for a particular widget.

Together with the addition of the profiles, we have also changed our home page so that the different parts of Widgipedia are now easier accessible. And we think it looks great too smiling smiley

As usual, here are more details about what's new:

1. Gallery widget in the new home page

Our widgets gallery is now itself a widget in the home page. You can click each thumbnail from the gallery to view the details page of each widget. The old gallery is also available - just click the "Widgets Gallery" link in the top navigation bar.

2. Seach bar in the new home page

The bar full of icons at the bottom of our new home page enables you to search for a particular platform or widget type with just one click on the correspondent icon.

3. Widgipedia Profiles

To see other users' profiles, just click the links next to their widgets or the avatars shown in the home page in the "Cool Widgipals" section.

The profiles consist of a few sections showing your account name at Widgpedia, your avatar, your motto, your interests, your "widgipals", your latest forum posts, your widgets (or favorite widgets) and a section where you can enter any information you want to show to the community about yourself.

To create or edit your own profile, you must log on to Widgipedia then click the "Edit your Profile" button showing at the top of most pages. Once in the profile page, you can edit each section of the profile in a dialog box.

To view your profile, from any page click on the "My Profile" link in the top navigation bar.

4. Widgitalks

Along with the profiles, you can now exchange public or private messages with the other members of the Widgipedia community through a section at the bottom of the profile page.

To send a message to a particular user, just click the "Post your Message" button in his profile page and have your message recorded in the page. You can choose your message to be public (visible by anybody) or private (only visible by you and by your recipient and invisible for any others).

To reply to a message, just click the "Reply" link next to the message.

The messages are shown in a threaded way - so you can read or reply to them by topic.

5. The Widgipedia Badges

Some of our users' profiles are showing one of the two Widgipedia "badges": the contributor badge and the developer badge.

The contributor badge is automatically displayed to the users who have contributed to our knowledge base through their posts or replys in our forum.

The developer badge is automatically displayed to the developers who have submitted their widgets at Widgipedia.

Thank you so much to all of you for helping us build the ultimate widgets resource! Watch for more widginews soon!

Your Widgipedia Team

Post by Your Widgipedia Team on 05/24/2007 07:52AM 1 comment(s)

We're Betta'! :-)

Today we've made it: Widgipedia is now in Beta!

We wish to thank all our friends who contributed to this: all of you who supported Widgipedia, uploaded or downloaded widgets, sent us great suggestions and feedback, helped building such a great community! And, to anticipate a bit what's below, it's exactly the community what Beta is all about. It's about sharing knowledge, inviting your friends, telling others about the cool widgets you've found (or taking those with you in your Web pages!), writing what you would want to see and finally making it happen together with others like you.

Whew! Now let's talk about each of the new cool things you can find on Widgipedia starting today:

1. Check out the new Community box in the left section of the site! You can now invite your friends to any Widgipedia page by simply clicking a link in that box. Or, you can click Link to this page to have the exact page's URL loaded in your browser's address bar. Also, you can tell others about the page by bookmarking it on your favorite sites - such as del.icio.us, digg.com or blink.com.

2. You can now embed into your Web pages a presentation of a widget similar to that we're showing in the widget details pages! If you want to showcase a desktop widget (for example in a blog or a MySpace page) simply upload it to Widgipedia and then copy and paste the HTML code from the Widget embed box to that page. Not only that your page will show a picture and description of the widget, but your users will be able to download it directly from your page!

3. You can embed a link to the widget details, or a direct download link, into your own pages: just copy and paste the links from the Widget page or Widget URL boxes to your page.

4. You can now subscribe to specialized RSS feeds that contain a particular platform or the widgets of a particular user.

5. Another addition is our Widgipedia Blog - you're reading it smiling smiley You'll find here the latest news, updates and plans - and we'd love to hear your comments about them! Simply tell us what you think, what you would like to see on Widgipedia, or anything about widgets and our site! Just as the Forum, the Blog is linked from the top menu, as well as from the Community box on the left side;

6. Along with the Blog, we have now also a Widgipedia Forum with several sections that you would probably want to check out. One of them is Widget Development, where you'll find several exciting topics, mostly addressed to the widget developers:
* The Widgipedia Tutorials, with various tutorials and learning resources;
* Widget Libraries, dedicated to building widget or gadget libraries;
* Widget Platforms Development, where you can share your experiences with any widget platform - or coordinate your efforts to invent a new one :-)
* Widget Development, which is a general development topic;
* Another section of the Forum is Widgipedia, where you'll find our team's announcements (like this one) or post your feedback through the Feedback topic;

7. Finally... our site got wider! smiling smiley We know you liked it before, but surely you'll love it from now on too winking smiley

Many thanks to all of you - we're happy that we can share all these new features with you. We hope that through these we're one step further in building all together your ultimate widgets resource!

Your Widgipedia Team

Post by Your Widgipedia Team on 11/03/2006 10:09AM 0 comment(s)