What kind of Opera Widgets would you like to see?
29 CommentsPublished June 21st, 2007 1:27 PM EDT By Daniel Goldman
The Opera India office is at it again. After successfully completing their extreme ‘Open the Web’ project a few weeks ago, they’re at it now with Opera Widgets. They’ve accepted upon themselves to make countless number of Opera Widgets ‘at break-neck speed’ and they’re soliciting your ideas for new kind of widgets.
I have a couple Opera Widgets that run on startup (I did it by saving a session with the widgets running) — the calendar and weather widgets. I would love to see the following widgets:
- An IM chat widget (similar to Meebo)
- A nice widget with MLB scores (real time), standings, and news (same for the NFL, NBA and NHL)
Here’s an opportunity for those of you who’ve been craving for a new kind of widget, but didn’t have the necessary developing skills. Let them know of the widgets you’re dreaming. Head over to their blog and add your quest in the comments.
P.S. It seems like the team in the Opera India office is full of energy; I’ll have to visit the office one day. 
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Yeah, maybe energy is all it takes; I have ~3KB TXT file of widget ideas, just lack the time
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Hmm cool Daniel. I am not staying far away from Opera India office- about 2 hours drive from the place I work. It would be great to catch up with you all in one place
Looking forward to see you around here some day.
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how about widgets that work/look right when youve got a minimum font size specified?
every single widget ive downloaded so far suffers from this problem. i finally just gave up on them all together.
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If they can manage to pull of a widget with Meebo like capabilities, that would be the first useful widget I’d ever use.
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What kind of Opera Widgets would you like to see?
I don’t use widgets and won’t ver use them, but I think that there should more more stuff for web developers. Just my 2 cents…
By the way, Daniel, did Opera team had any time to do “that thing” which I sen’t via email?
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A dedicated widget for US weather would be excellent, “touchtheSky” just rubs me the wrong way.
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I’ve give up Opera widgets too
Sorry
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Enough with these Widgets. They suck and they continue to suck no matter how contests Opera is throwing.
Seriously, the Widget stuff is flopping.
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DjiXas, I’ll talk to you offline (in private) about ‘that thing’.
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It took me some time to get onto the Opera Widget bandwagon. Obviously the widgets would be much more praticle if they were to have more functionality and greater interaction with the browser.
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Enough with the lame *** comments. If you don’t use widgets, just ignore them and don’t pester everyone else with your venom. No one is interested in your opinion on widgets.
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I think they’re a bit redundant on the desktop. On the mobile platform i think they could be very usefull. I can’t wait for version 9 of opera mobile.
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Have you checked out this one?
We’ll see about that when the iPhone comes out and people will be wanting to have similar widget functionality on their existing phone (hopefully Opera Mobile 9 will come out soon).
As for what widgets I use. It varies. I think Opera should really have some sort of import/export Widget list or something. I mean when widgets first came out, I went crazy and downloaded heaps of widgets and had them all organised in folders, etc. But then when I reinstalled Opera, I lost them all and couldn’t be bothered going through the widgets and downloading all of them (or at least the ones I could remember). There are also some widgets who’s functionality you remember but forget the name and have trouble finding again. So as an aside a widget list importer/exporter would be really cool (it would just need to store the url of the widgets you have and then when you import the list, it could just download the most updated version).
But I normally always have:
- Scientific Calculator
- Functions 3D
- VideoDownloader
- Artist’s Sketchbook
- touchTheSky
- dotoo
And normally some webdev stuff like:
- CSS Help
- Ruler
I used to also use the Comics Widget but now I use Speed Dial for that.
But I would really like to see
- a google talk or just general IM widget (talkgadget.google.com doesn’t seem to work in Opera)
- a usage meter (that works for australian ISPs)
I remember I did try writing a widget once but I never got the XmlHttpRequest working. Maybe if they incorporated that into their widget tutorial (see it’s commonly used) it would be easier to write widgets.
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I don’t like Widgets, are too slow, and today are useless, I don’t need a web calendar, What we need is something like Google Browser Sync.
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I took me a while to get on board with widgets, I think you really need a second monitor or a big screen with some unused space to truly get into them.
Things I’d like… hmm, well, the thing I want is perhaps the simplest of all. How about a simple analogue clock *without* a second hand?
The Opera one would be perfect (the logo would really help, since people are always saying “oh is that konfabulator” when they see the widgets at work). The good-looking clocks all have second hands, which are distracting.
Personally I think Opera widgets are awesome since they only load when I want them. If I’m not running a browser, I’m doing something on my computer that needs dedicated system resources.
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I mentioned meebo as a widget a long time ago in the widget suggestions forum, but it seems to have been deleted now. I would love to see more developer related tools. I’m constantly using these.
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I dont like widgets either.
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widgets suck.
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No doubt, widgets are handy tools, on desktop, and especially on mobile small screens, to minimize number of clicks.
I use calendar, calculator, weather forecast, note pad, sketchbook, presentation helper, google maps…
And check out the brilliant *Travel Mate* widget (http://widgets.opera.com/widget/6945 ). Great potential on mobile devices, for people on the move.
Opera Widgets Team should work with other widget creators to optimize the best ideas for Opera Mobile 9.
Goal is to minimize number of clicks. Thus widgets could cover all areas. However, some *vital* ones are covered by Rich Internet Applications (eg. mail, banking, maps) for good reasons.
Opera Widgets probably cannot compete with those. So can’t beat them, join them…
That said, a Opera Mail Widget, or My Opera Forum Read/Write Widget, designed and working like a RIA, on mobile, would be nice ???
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Other than always starting Opera with a saved Session (or with the startup Dialog), how can I sometimes start with a particular Session (when Opera isn’t already open: so not using the menu item, etc)?
The Help talks about a command line switch, but not for Windows (O9.21 on XP here).
Thank you.
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A dedicated widget for US weather would be excellent, “touchtheSky” just rubs me the wrong way.
Huh? Whats wrong with it that has that reaction? It’s very highly functional; isn’t it?
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hmmm an IM widget like the meebo…. by the way I would like to congratulate Opera for they were the only browser that I was able to install in my alma mater (college) despite the fact that the administrators prohibits any type of installation to the office computers hahaha… also congrats Opera for my friends in college were able to surf the sites like youtube meebo and others using opera even they were blocked by the administrator…. firefox and Internet Explorer were indeed lamers!!!!
IM widget that can handled yahoo hotmail etc
Speedtest widget
hmmm what about an antivirus widget.. not totally the same antivirus being installed but only to upload a file and checked whether the file is infected or not….
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The way to do it would be using the command line switch /settings and to specify a opera6.ini with that saved session.
So assuming you want to have a special Widgets session you can run, do the following:
- go to your profile folder (if you’re not sure where it is enter opera:about in opera and look at your Opera directory under paths)
- make a copy of your existing opera6.ini and rename it to something like widgets.ini
- open up widgets.ini and under [User Prefs] and make sure
* Startup Type=0
* Show Startup Dialog=0
* Windows Storage File=C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\sessions\widgets.win (or whatever your session is called)
- now create a shortcut to Opera (either by right clicking on Opera.exe in your program files folder or by copying an existing opera shortcut) and maybe rename the shortcut to Opera Widgets or something.
- right click and select properties
- click on the Shortcut tab
- in Target add to the end “/settings” “\widgets.ini” (or whatever your .ini file is called)
- so Target should now contain something like “C:\Program Files\Opera\Opera.exe” “/settings” “C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\widgets.ini”
- click ok and you’re done!
you can have as many .ini files and shortcuts as you want!
hope that helps!
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Thanks Rhonnysparks, yes that helps.
But (Daniel, and Opera folks) it sure is an awful kludge! It’s unintuitive and laborious to do. It restricts any such session to whatever settings were preserved in opera6.ini at the time of creation (unless every time we make a change affecting opera6.ini, e.g. security prefs, we then manually update every copied .ini file too).
Why can’t the saved session .win files be allowed as command line switches? e.g. “C:\Program Files\Opera\Opera.exe” “/session” “C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\widgets.win”
Better still, why can’t .win files be associated with Opera, so that merely double-clicking e.g. widgets.win (or a shortcut to it) opened Opera with that Session?
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Thanks Rhonnysparks, yes that helps.
But (Daniel, and Opera folks) it sure is an awful kludge! It’s unintuitive and laborious to do. It restricts any such session to whatever settings were preserved in opera6.ini at the time of creation (unless every time we make a change affecting opera6.ini, e.g. security prefs, we then manually update every copied .ini file too).
Why can’t the saved session .win files be allowed as command line switches? e.g. [the example path triggered an "awaiting moderation" message, it seems]
Better still, why can’t .win files be associated with Opera, so that merely double-clicking e.g. widgets.win (or a shortcut to it) opened Opera with that Session?
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First of all, I still think Opera widgets need some GUI improvements:
- shadows
- more transparency effects
The widgets I use on the yahoo widget engine are:
- nice RSS news displayer
- Outlook connector for daily schedule
- Battery charge on the laptop
I don’t believe Opera has any of the two last capabilities… Other nices ones to have are CPU meter, network activity, etc… That even google desktop has.
Erik
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This post? Totally made my day – always wanted to see some things as widgets but unfortunately, I lack programer skills. Have posted on Opera India’s post ^___^ Thanks for the link.
People tend to disregard widgets as eyecandy but they can have awesome functions. My faves for now are screen ruler, scientific calculator, artist’s sketchbook, HTML Post, touchthesky, torrent powersearch and googlemaps XD
If we had more widgets geared towards peeps who use myspace, youtube, Google talk, and blogs, they’d definitely get more popular.
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I’d like to see an Opera Widget that would access the Google Bookmarks and Google Notebook! Something simple please… nothing big and fancy. Minimalistic FTW!
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Lars, I would love to see an option in each widget’s properties for running the widget at startup.