Yahoo widgets, what is your opinion?

aigle · #1 February 14th, 2006, 11:49 AM

eyes-open · #2 February 14th, 2006, 12:59 PM

Hi Aigle:-

Until late last year it was known as Konfabulator. So bear in mind if you Google for info. about it.

As for the resources used by Widgets. Bear in mind that many are written by 3rd party folks and resources depend on what the widget is calling, frequency, animation needed etc - well you get it....

Memory discussion from Konfab/Yahoo Widget forum

Personally I run this together with DesktopX Widgets. Note with DesktopX that the widgets run in their own memory space and so don't require the actual program to be running in the background.

Just for background reading - a couple of links from last year:-

Konfabulator V DesktopX by creator of DesktopX

Below looks briefly at a wider group including:-

DesktopX, Konfabulator, AveDesk, Kapsules, Samurize

Widget Wars: The battle for your Windows desktop!

GUI_Tex · #3 February 14th, 2006, 01:27 PM

The "full" download is available here, http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4513
I downloaded it but never installed it yet.. Is it true a connection is required for this to run?

eyes-open · #4 February 14th, 2006, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GUI_Tex

Is it true a connection is required for this to run?

Only those widgets that need access - such as weather, webcam, networking etc.

Besides that - just the usual access needed for updating and grabbing new widgets.

Edit to add a note:-

It's well worth taking a look at the guides for making your own widgets that are available for these programs. You may be surprised how accessible they are:-

Yahoo Widgets Resources

DesktopX Widgets Resources

I'm not trying to push DesktopX - just that it comes at stuff from a different angle & it's worth knowing about if you're looking at putting widgets on your desktop.

aigle · #5 February 16th, 2006, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyes-open

Until late last year it was known as Konfabulator. So bear in mind if you Google for info. about it.

As for the resources used by Widgets. Bear in mind that many are written by 3rd party folks and resources depend on what the widget is calling, frequency, animation needed etc - well you get it....

Memory discussion from Konfab/Yahoo Widget forum

Personally I run this together with DesktopX Widgets. Note with DesktopX that the widgets run in their own memory space and so don't require the actual program to be running in the background.

Just for background reading - a couple of links from last year:-

Konfabulator V DesktopX by creator of DesktopX

Below looks briefly at a wider group including:-

DesktopX, Konfabulator, AveDesk, Kapsules, Samurize

Widget Wars: The battle for your Windows desktop!

Is it safe to run desktopX widget?

I used almost all of the list posted above by me. Some were really nice,but I saw all of them were eating almost about 50Mb of memory that is big amount, so I uninstallled them. To me they are resource hog? Not much benefit, just a pay!

Rasheed187 · #6 February 16th, 2006, 07:01 PM

To tell you the truth I´m not into this widget thing at all, at the moment I do not need them plus I´ve read that they can be quite a resource hog.

eyes-open · #7 February 17th, 2006, 01:20 AM

Resource hog ? I guess it's a matter of ~~definition~~, more accurately what resources are available to you and how closely you need to regulate them. At the point where I need a lot of resources, for example rendering large graphics they are simply closed down.:-

In the screenshot below I have the following:-

Konfabulator/Yahoo Widgets

The program is running in the background
The Widget running is one that shows me my public facing IP (not visible in shot)

DesktopX

The program isn't running in background- as said earlier, I prefer Widgets to Objects. So it isn't necessary to run DesktopX process.

The widgets running are:-

Weather (well I'm English - it's what we do hehe....)
Uptime
Processor (it's high cos' I fold proteins with spare cycles)
Battery
Digital Clock

aigle · #8 February 17th, 2006, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyes-open

Just for background reading - a couple of links from last year:-

Konfabulator V DesktopX by creator of DesktopX

Below looks briefly at a wider group including:-

DesktopX, Konfabulator, AveDesk, Kapsules, Samurize

Widget Wars: The battle for your Windows desktop!

Your last two links are empty.

eyes-open · #9 February 18th, 2006, 12:06 AM

@ aigle

Quote:

Originally Posted by aigle

Your last two links are empty.

joeuser.com was probably just down for a while - the links are fine.

cristopher · #10 September 27th, 2006, 11:02 AM

nice witgets on this page...

sosaiso · #11 September 27th, 2006, 09:57 PM

Tried it awhile ago. Didn't like the excessive memory usage. I mean come on, 50 megs for a bunch of widgets?

I'll stick to Rainlendar for most of my needs. If only there was a light way to track stocks on my desktop. I'd kill for that.

Rico · #12 September 27th, 2006, 11:58 PM

Hello Aigle,

If you have MS Office you can make a desktop shortcut to sticky notes, see

http://www.jefflevy.com/Lessons/LESSON%20418.pdf

I have office 2002 & made a desktop shortcut see Pic:

aigle · #13 September 28th, 2006, 07:46 AM

@sosaiso
@Rico

Currently I am using 5 of them-- calender, analog clock, ram, CPU and battery meters.
Plus StarDock.

They do eat a lot of ram and their loading is slow on booting but I like them.

Mrkvonic · #14 September 28th, 2006, 12:17 PM

Hello,
I find the widgets an unnecessary bloat. They do not provide any more info than what you get by simple browsing, clicking on your calendar in the system tray, opening the task mager or such. Just extra graphics that are not needed to show simple things. I don't need to know the weather in Quebec every moment thankyouverymuch and I'm not paragliding so wind changes per minutes do not concern me. As an average joe, I go well without the fanfare.
Mrk

aigle · #15 September 28th, 2006, 05:20 PM

I totally agree with u. I jsut like them as a desktop decoration rather than getting any info.
Only one exception, I like CPU widget to show most of time how much is my CPU under stress, esp when system has some slow down or trasient lockup due to any reason.
Otherwise they are just a play to me.

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