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The history of widgets
Widgets, most people use them now on their social network pages, blogs, or even on desktops. But where did they originate and how did they come to be? Niall Kennedy, the widget guru, answers that in his brief history of the widget.Where did it all begin? Back in 1981 when the graphical user interface was first designed for home use. Netscape pushed the widget along its journey in 1996 with the Navigator browser and PowerStart. This Netscape technology showed the latest stock quotes, weather and started using other dynamic web content. It wasn't until 2003 when Konfabulator hit the scene to bring OSX users fancy desktop widgets.
Now we have handy widgets everywhere, and they are such common place on everything from mobile devices, desktops, and websites. Niall has also created a widget timeline available here.
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsCarlosSep 28th 2007 5:02PM
Cool, so Apple is finaly credited with the original widgets known back in 1984 as "Desk Accessories".
From the time line - Original accessories included calculator, calendar, clock, note pad, and games.
Konfabulator should be credited for bringing them back to the modern day OS (OSX & XP/Vista)
martinSep 29th 2007 4:18AM
Back in 1999 I used to build my own widgets with multimedia builder. That was fun :)
Thanks for this interesting post!