i really don’t think they were intended to compete with extensions

We don’t really know yet how useful widgets may or may not be, but they have been popular on some platforms. I believe Opera is also designed in such a way that users are expected to keep it open for long periods of time (or entire sessions), and so it’s a more appropriate feature than in other browsers.

I think you misunderstood my words (or at least I could have been unclear). What I meant to say was Maxthon lets you get your feeds on any computer you have the browser installed on. You simply sign on to your account stored on their server. Opera cannot currently do this without you needing to subscribe to your feeds on other computers all over again.

You have to keep konfabulator open right? The yahoo widget is not stand-alone at all. Opera widgets are simple web pages, thus opera running is analogous to konfabulator running - both host widgets which cannot run alone. The benefit of Opera is that the engine does not duplicate functionality. Just press CTRL+H to hide opera when you don’t use it and your widgets will keep running.

General: Just to reemphasise - widgets are just web pages. Opera does web pages (and web apps are core to Opera platform). No conflict of interest.

“f I want to view a raw XML page with Pretty Print etc etc.”

You can use user CSS and/or user js to do this IIRC.

“Also, on the RSS/Notes talk, I just saw that the beta of the next Maxthon browser allows you to store your feeds”

That is what Opera has always done! You can use opera’s powerful access point / search interface to dynamically mine feeds for data and much more. I generate meta-feeds for topics that interest me from lots of seperate feeds (and mailing lists / mails - unification of data) - really powerful stuff.

I think the widget could be useful since the era of Web 2.0 is coming, those widgets could take advantage of the APIs they provide and render those sites more like a normal application.

Just to chime in on the RSS/Notes debate, I myself don’t use Opera’s RSS reader, since I need to read my news on multiple computers.

I’m not going to bash you… I don’t use Opera’s RSS reader either. I doesn’t meet my requirement… because that one I actually do need to have access to from multiple computers. So I certainly agree with you on those points. Although truth be told, I don’t think I was really disagreeing with you on the notes thing either.

I will also agree with the above comments that we haven’t really seen any useful widgets, but like Svein Kåre mentions, that doesn’t mean the concept is bad. I truly hope there is a good widget developed to prove the concept. I’ve got a handful of ideas centered around the Opera community web site (using SPARQL) but I don’t know enough about either to actually get the ball rolling.

I still think Opera should be innovating in the browser field more. Do something similar to Firefox’s Places or add security BY ACTUALLY ADDING A PHISHING DETECTOR.

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