Badge, gadget, portlet, snippet, flake, app: These are all words used to describe the exact same thing, a technology called the widget. But what exactly is a widget? The very name sounds odd, like a china set or an inhabitant of Oz, but in reality a widget is a tiny little program that is installed on a webpage by it’s owner. Even that definition is a bit misleading. Instead, widgets are nifty utilities that add functionality to websites. Examples include daily weather updates, flight information, stock market tickets, auction-tickers, even countdowns and clocks.
A more technical explanation of a widget seems called for. They are programs that stand alone and need to be embedded, a process by which code is added to a website, into a page by its owner or by someone who has authorship rights. Traditionally widgets are used to add functionality to blogs and social media site profiles, but they can be added to any website. Again, they simply add functionality to a page.
The trouble begins when one considers the authorship of a widget. Some are developed by users and freely authored, while others are developed by companies such as the weather channel. This is problematic for some end users who feel that the advertisement stigma attached to such programs is unacceptable.
There is an additional category of widgets, the desktop widget. These are ‘embedded’ onto a computer instead of a website. They have no impact on webpage performance.
While widgets have been around for decades, they have recently seen an explosion in their usage rates owing primarily to the heavy use of social media sites like FaceBook and MySpace. Users embed widgets into their profiles to track visitors and provide information to their visitors.
No matter what word you use to describe them, widgets are functional programs that make the experience of web browsing more exciting and informative.