Comments on: Opera introduces Widget Generator

By: MrL

MrL — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:44:49 +0000

el_esponjoso:

As I said many times before, what I want from
Opera team is to stop producing useless eyecandy
“things”, stop loosing functionality and speed
from version to version, stop introducing half-done
tools. Focus on refining tools that are already
in Opera, focus on fixing bugs (which make Opera 9
unusable for most users I know).

They don’t want to provide html-email, because it’s
useless nonstandard eyecandy, right? But they
happily introduce useless nonstandard eyecandy
“widgets”.
And what stops them from fixing thousands of bugs,
of which some are years old? Is it working
on genius concepts like “widgets”? Or do they spend
all of their time on marketing and praising their
own work?

Yes, this is my own subjective point of view. I don’t
care how much others love “widgets”.

By: strawberry

strawberry — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 05:35:49 +0000

I don’t want to be negative and discourage the introduction of new technology but … the implementation of widgets just doesnt work for me right now. Widgets get their own window, and thus get far too much presence within my screen estate. To me they resemble some ancient technology: the channel push functionality that was once introduced with windows 98 and was soon forgotten.
They don’t deliver high value right now although i’m not sure if thats caused by lack of uninspiration or by some other limitations.

Also: the user interaction with widgets should be more standardized: new technology should be made available in a way that is familiar as much as possible: using a seperate window by default just feels ‘dirty’: i choose opera because of it’s tabbed browsing.

Also
- add standard configuration methods for widgets (including screen coordinates, or let them snap to the widgets panel.)
- provide ‘living space’ within opera, not within windows, put them in a dedicated screen estate location: next to widgets panel.
- or.. create a widget tab that tiles all widgets into ‘one’ webpage, similar to the http://www.google.com/ig site. I find most widgets similar to the google page content blocks anyway.
- come to think of it: provide a way to embed widget-code to my google.com/ig page directly.

I doubt that widgets in their current form will become accepted by early adopters since they simply don’t provide enough added value and take up too much handling time.

By: el_esponjoso

el_esponjoso — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:48:25 +0000

MrL, if you don´t like widgets it doesn´t mean for other people the widgets are useless
Shame on you, MrL

By: MrL

MrL — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:58:50 +0000

Oh great. Now you can create those useless widgets easier!

There are 448 of them? I browsed through all of them
and found a total of 0 interesting.

Stupid widgets. Useless technology. Waste of time.
Shame on you Opera.

By: Pallab

Pallab — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:59:49 +0000

Arve thanks for the tip about Autodiscovery feature

By: Sohil

Sohil — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:53:34 +0000

Thanks Arve.

By: Pallab

Pallab — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:49:14 +0000

I had emailed SU about a month back requesting them to provide support Opera taking advantage of its widgets. I didnt get any reply from them. So I believe that they arent interested.
In my blog I had suggested using Spurl as an alternative of SU. I have get quite a few hit in my blog from Google for search terms like “StumpleUpon for Opera”, which suggests that a lot of Opera users want to see SU for OPera.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:34:58 +0000

Daniel, you ask if a stumbleupon widget is possible, yes but it would have very limited interactivity with the page.

By: Wajo357

Wajo357 — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:15:43 +0000

Well, it seems like Opera is using the auto-discovery feature for their desktopteam website: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

By: Daniel Goldman

Daniel Goldman — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:36:00 +0000

Arve, good point. I read your post the other day about this auto-discovery feature. I wonder why Opera didn’t make this public until now.

By: ノヴム・オペラヌム

ノヴム・オペラヌム — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:20:20 +0000

Widgetize – Opera Widget Generator…

http://widgets.opera.com/widget/4297

By: Arve

Arve — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:18:19 +0000

Daniel, you can make the OperaWatch widget discoverable by using widget autodiscovery.

By: sc

sc — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:13:10 +0000

Wow, that page is pretty cool!

By: Sohil

Sohil — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:11:48 +0000

That’s great news. It would have better adoption (the Widget creating tool) by Bloggers if Opera had a bit more market share. But it doesn’t hurt to try, does it

Anyway know if there’s a good Cricket(Sport) Widget