Opera Widgets are small web applications that run outside the browser. Under the hood they’re just a plain simple webpage, written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Opera Widgets, whose specification was submitted to the W3C, are capable of running on any Opera browser, regardless of platform (desktop, mobile, or devices).
Developing an application as an Opera Widget, especially a mobile application, has multiple advantages. Since they’re really just a webpage (under the hood), development time is often shorter. In addition, once the widget has been developed it should work on all platforms. Our hope is for the W3C to accept our widget specification as a Web standard, which means these widgets won’t be tied down to Opera.
Since Opera first added support for widgets a year ago, more than 1,200 widgets were created by Opera users. So which ones are the useful ones? And which ones are worth while keeping on your desktop? Here’s my take.
Note: I’ve included a screenshot of each widget. Some RSS readers don’t display images.
Social Networks
Facebook widget — With this widget you can view and search your friends, show their statuses, receive notifications of messages, pokes etc. The animations and live AJAX search adds a nice usability touch to the widget. (See a diagram outlining the features).
Twitter widget — If you’re hooked on to Twitter, this widget is a must. It will show you the recent twits, or messages, of your friends. The widget also has an option to auto refresh. You could also post messages to your own Twitter account. This widget, called Twippera, is available in the following languages: English, Japanese, and Spanish.
My Opera Community widget — This widget lets you see who of your friends are online, and allows you to send them messages. The widget also keeps track of your watched items (i.e. comments to blog posts and photos) and forum threads you’ve subscribed to. Similar to the Facebook widget, the animations adds an elegant touch.
Developer/Designer Tools
Desktop ruler — A simple ruler for your screen or desktop.
Screen ruler — A more powerful ruler than the above mentioned Desktop ruler, this widget displays a grid over your screen, allowing you to click on two points, which in turn shows you the distance between the two points.
Artist’s Sketchbook — Photoshop in a widget (not really). With artist tools such as pencils, charcoal, paint brushes, calligraphy pen and more, you could draw a masterpiece. Take a look at some of the pictures drawn with this widget.
Shopping tools
eBay watcher — This widget allows you to watch up to 10 eBay auctions, giving you details such as: current bid amount, highest bidder, number of bids, and the auction’s end time.
Games
SimAquarium — This widget is one of the more popular ones. In short, SimAquarium is an aquarium simulation game, where you can buy and sell fish, aquarium sceneries (plants, rocks etc), lighting and other things for your aquarium. Warning: This game is addictive.
Circular Tetris — Another very popular widget. Complete a ring to clear the row.
Blackjack — Play Blackjack without losing money.
Snake — The cult game from cell phones.
Chess — This chess widget has 3 difficulty levels with the ability to switch which side of the board you are on, and you can even take back your move.
Tools and stuff
Torrent PowerSearch — This widget searches from many torrent sites at once. It display search results in tabs simultaneously for all sites, showing all the key information: name, download link, size, seeders, and leechers.
VideoDownloader — This widget allows you to download videos directly from most video sites (Google Video, Putfile, YouTube… etc).
Calendar — A Multilingual Calender.
Weather widget — This weather widget, called touchTheSky, is an excellent one for your desktop. It features: international weather coverage, temperature, wind speed, satellite images, air quality (including humidity, pollen levels, and UV levels), moon phases, 5-day forecast, and more. This is one of the most downloaded Opera Widgets.
Scientific Calculator — A scientific calculator with the look and feel of a real calculator.
Live traffic — View live traffic data overlaid onto Google Maps. Currently only available in the UK.
Earthquakes Map — This widget displays locations of earthquakes from the past 7 days. Even though you may not care about earthquakes, this widget is worth while checking out – it’s very sophisticated.
Bug Me Not — Widget to help you bypass registration on web sites. It will provide your with publicly available usernames and passwords.
RSS etc.
Bloglines notifier — Shows the number of unread feeds on your bloglines account.
Latest del.icio.us bookmarks — Quick access to your delicious bookmarks on your desktop.
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“Note: I’ve included a screenshot of each widget. Some RSS readers, such as Opera’s built-in one, don’t display images.”
Um are you sure about that? you see I was actually reading this articles through opera’s build in RSS reader and all the images seem to be there.
I guess I’ll now go and read the rest of what you wrote.
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Hylic, you’re right. Not sure why I thought so — I must have been confusing with another reader.
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There are some feeds that it doesn’t display the images, but i’m assuming that has to do with the feed and not the reader (though i haven’t tested to see if there are feeds that will display in some readers and not in Opera’s reader.
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Great post! I want to add the mini.del.icio.us (http://widgets.opera.com/widget/4544) widget: simple and small!
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And what about the Trafikanten realtime widget:
http://widgets.opera.com/widget/4886
We are planning to set a monitor in the Opera Oslo reception today, showing the departures of the two tram/bus stops outside the office: “Birkelunden” and “Alexander Kiellands plass”.
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M, great post, I never used widgets as I am able to do all that without them, but not something like eBay Watcher. So it’s running now
Thanks for this post.
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Calling Snake “The cult game from cell phones” requires some heavy history rewriting skills. Kudos to you sir.
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How to make a folder for my Opera widgets.
I want to minimize my widgets, but I dont find any means on the Widget tool bar
If I close the Widget then I loose it alltogether, and I have to download it agasin.
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Muhammad, to organize your widgets in folders, in the toolbar menu go to Widgets > Manage Widgets… Click the arrow symbol on the ‘Add widget’ button… click on ‘Add folder’.
Btw, if a widget is turned off, you could turn it on again by enabling it in the ‘Widgets’ toolbar menu.
Hope this helps.