Modern Street

From the get go, I think the Web was made for widgets. Or maybe to be more precise, widgets were made for the Web.

Widget = A hypothetical, or real-life mechanical gadget or device.

Perhaps one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0, although they have been around before that, widgets (on the Web) are small pieces of code that utilize JavaScript, Flash, or HTML to display fancy badges, buttons, banners, ads, RSS feeds, media streaming, etc by fetching content from an external third party site without the actual website owner having to do anything other than placing the code on their site.

Other terms given for widgets are gadgets, badges, snippets, and modules. They all refer to the eye catching, and often novel looking, little pieces of code that will brighten up any website or page out there.

And they are mostly free to use.

This can be an addictive pastime – of browsing the multitudes of widgets online and checking out the latest and slickest widgets. There are so many widgets online for so many things, from checking the countdown to a pregnancy, to checking the latest stock market news, to displaying the weather reading, to live video streaming, etc, it is impossible to describe them all.

Why do programmers spend a lot of time coding a widget and then releasing it for free? Releasing a widget for free, utilizes a viral way to market a website at no effort if the widget gets really popular; as the feed for the widget comes from the third party site which will have its source URL displayed at some points. But it’s a fair trade. Give and you shall receive.

The possibilities for widgets are just endless, and there are thousands of free widgets at present. Web widgets mostly require Java Script or Flash enabled browsers to function, so may not display on older browsers.

Here are a couple sample applications for widgets:

Sudoku

Some places to find free downloadable widgets:

http://www.widgetbox.com
http://www.smartwebgadgets.com
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ (For Mac users)
http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/widgets/ (For blogs that use TypePad, a good source of widgets)
http://www.springwidgets.com (Good place to find cool widgets where you can customize the size to fit)