Widgets Take a Breather for Update
Widgets Take a Breather for Update
March 30, 2007: Mortgage rates, stock prices, news headlines and sport scores, widgets offer the latest in instant information grabbing tools accessible from the desktop.
Yahoo!, one of the pioneers of the Widgets phenomenon, has launched its latest Widgets desktop platform, offering a new Widget Dock, improved Widgets and free downloads across all major operating systems.
Yahoo! says its Widgets 4 will offer more functionality in user connected desktop applications, making users ‘better organised than ever.’
The widgets offer a shortcut link to a user’s favourite internet information and services, offering at-a-glance desktop updates on things like, stock prices, weather information, news headlines and sports scores or more personal items such as mail checkers and calendars.
While Widgets originally became available on the Mac OS X desktop and was then picked up by independent engines like Konfabulator, in 2005 Yahoo! purchased the Konfabulator and commenced fine tuning its own offerings. Windows have recently taken the phenomenon on board, incorporating it with Vista.
Yahoo! says it has dramatically improved the performance in its latest offering, reducing memory consumption of individual Widgets by up to 40 percent.