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Posts tagged with "widgets"

Opera 10.10 final and 10.2 alpha

By Andreas Bovens. Thursday, 26. November 2009, 00:31:29

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On Monday this week, we released the final version of Opera 10.10 for desktop, with Opera Unite as its main highlight. Gautam gave a fine description on the Opera Unite blog last week:

Opera Unite establishes your personal computer as a Web server. You are given a URL similar to http://devicename.username.operaunite.com/. You can have as many computers as you like, and each is linked to your username. This way people can find the real you. The unique you, physically on your own computer. Possibly at home, work, or at the coffee shop.

That unique you could be running one or more of the preinstalled or downloadable Opera Unite applications, or perhaps an app you built yourself. Note that we’re giving away prizes for new Opera Unite apps, so let all your creativity loose :-)

Quick links to some of the documentation we have prepped for you thus far:

You’ll find more articles in the Opera Unite section on Dev.Opera, and we’re also working on updating the Libraries overview so as to include Yusef and the various plugins. Stay tuned for more!

And now for the second half of this story — on Wednesday (some speculate that we never sleep) we released Opera 10.2 alpha, featuring Opera Widgets for Desktop. This release allows you to install and run widgets as standalone applications.

In other words, you can now build cross-platform applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux using Web standards, which is a very powerful concept. If you want to get started, have a look at Remigiusz’s Opera Widgets as standalone applications article.

So, lots of new stuff to play with — let us know what you think!

12 comments

Run Opera Widgets as standalone applications

By Andreas Bovens. Thursday, 15. October 2009, 13:11:05

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Over at Opera Labs, we have just released a desktop build that allows you to run Opera Widgets as standalone desktop applications. With this release, widgets are getting a complete make-over from being small, single-purpose gadgets to first-class citizens with the power to replace native applications.

Differently phrased, this means that any web developer with knowledge of HTML, CSS and JS can create a desktop application. And for good measure and scaling goodness, you can even throw in some SVG magic as well!

Below, I've included a screenshot of my Mac running the Twitter widget. Note the Twitter icon shown in the Dock, the native Chrome and shadow, and the fact that Opera is not running.

Screenshot of standalone Twitter widget

You can find detailed information about installation, running, debugging widgets on this Labs build on Dev.Opera. If you want to get started building your own widgets, there is of course our Widgets SDK.

Note: there are currently some issues to get the Widget Emulator running well on Opera 10.10 builds – we are investigating this and working on a fix. For the time being, we recommend to use the Widget Emulator in Opera 10.

And of course, let us know what you think in the comments!

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Over the Air - presentation on universal access devices

By Henny Swan. Thursday, 1. October 2009, 10:33:12

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I presented at Over the Air last week, a two day hack focusing on widgets and the mobile web. It was a great end to an already busy stretch of conferences with a day of presentations followed by an all night hack and presentations the next day.

It was all about widgets and a heavy emphasis on web standards and the buzz was around who could build the best widget in a number of categories ranging from best Doctor Who hack to location aware hack. You can check out the competition winners on the Over the Air blog.

It was good to be able to show the potential of widgets for all users and just how easy Opera widgets are to build with plain old HTML, CSS and XML - no added programing languages needed. I demoed how to build, test and deploy a widget using our widget emulator and Opera Dragonfly for remote debugging. Below is the presentation which is also available in the following formats:

View more presentations from Henny on Slideshare.

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Opera Widgets: mobile applications made with Web Standards

By Bruce Lawson. Wednesday, 8. July 2009, 15:40:19

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Another standard that Opera is involved with is the Widgets specification. Widgets are standalone applications that are made with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. They are zipped up with an XML configuration file that describes their size on the screen, or whether they're full screen, whether they can connect to the Internet etc. The zipped file is renamed .wgt and then they can be sent to a mobile phone (or Archos tablet, Nintendo Wii, Web TV, or anything else). The device's Widget Manager then unzips them and installs them automatically.

What's great about this is that it allows developer to make web-enabled applications that can look like native apps, but which are made with Web Standards. And, because they're made with Standards, they work anywhere that can support a full web browser.

Opera has released a full Widgets SDK and documentation, together with a Widget repository—think free appstore—so you can try them out and get inspiration for your own Widget. You can also see how Carsonified made their Twiggy Widget.

At the moment, they're supported by Opera desktop, Opera for devices and Opera Mobile. Once the W3C specification is completed, we will amend our implementation to follow the Open Standard and expect other browser vendors to support them.

The mobile phone industry is very interested in Widgets. Vodafone Netherlands recently ran a Widgets development camp in Amsterdam to get developers making Widgets prior to their launch of a Vodafone appstore, which will allow developers to charge money for their work.

Today, Vodafone have announced their Summer of Widgets competition:

Each WEEK during the Vodafone and Betavine Summer of Widgets competition, three prize packages of a Samsung NC 20 Netbook bundled with a Nokia N96 handset will be awarded to the three best new widgets.

Even if you don’t win you can still feature your app in our Apps Shop live in eight countries across Europe! The competition starts on 6th July so that's three bundles, every week for the next eight weeks.

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Betavine’s widget competition

By Andreas Bovens. Thursday, 19. March 2009, 15:25:58

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Betavine, a Vodafone Group R&D lab, is offering developers a chance to win £20,000 in a mobile widget competition - yes, that's £20,000! Developers are invited to submit widgets that run on the Opera for Mobile 9.5 platform, which is included on Nokia 6210, Nokia N78, Nokia N95 8gb and Nokia N96 devices.

In order to get started with your widget, we recommend having a look at our Widgets SDK, and especially at the articles on mobile and cross-device development and the tools section. Note that you can use Opera Dragonfly in combination with the Widget Emulator to debug your widgets.

There is also Betavine's own Get Started page and an extensive Mobile Widgets User Experience Guidelines PDF document by Vodafone.

So, if this competition sounds like something for you, sign up at Betavine, and let us know what you come up with :-) You can even submit your creation to the Opera Widgets site!

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