A Microformat and Proposal For Interoperable Widgets

Kevin Lawver

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Introduction

• Everyone has a widget platform: Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Opera and even AOL
• None of them play nicely together
• Why not? (that's rhetorical, but really, why not?)

The Problem

• We needed modules: small, self-contained pieces of content and functionality
• Lots of specs, none of them open, none of them contained all the things we needed
• No interoperability between them.

The Players

• Apple - HTML + XML Manifest
• Yahoo - XML
• Microsoft - XML currently, HTML + XML coming soon
• Google - XML with embedded HTML
• Opera - HTML + XML Manifest
• other smaller players

Microformats to the Rescue!

• They're just HTML
• Apple, Opera and AOL support HTML-based widgets
• AOL created a microformat just for widgets (modular content even)
• Microformats could be transformed into other non-HTML formats.

The Microformat: ModuleT

• We wrote a spec
• and some documentation
• In use today in all the modules on AIM Pages

Benefits

• Documentation and code all in one file.
• Lots of existing authoring tools and validation services for HTML.
• Write once (and a half, maybe twice), run lots of places
• Faster roll out: get your widget in front of more people

Challenges

• Every widget platform has its own API and quirks
• A lot aren't even based on HTML.

But...

• Most of the API's attempt to solve the same problems
• And it's easy enough to figure out what platform you're running in.

An Example: AIM Fight

• Simple premise with lots of possibilities
• Simple web service that's easy to parse
• Existing Dashboard and AIM Pages widgets.

Development

1. Generate the skeleton
2. Save to a new directory
3. Write code
4. Validate often

Working in AIM Pages

1. Zip up directory
2. Upload
3. Go play

Working in Dashboard

1. Create a copy of the directory
2. Create info.plist
3. Add .wdgt to the end of the directory
4. Double-click

Working in Opera 9

1. Open config.xml in Opera
2. Done!

The Guts

• Branch for window.widget vs. lop
• Saving data is different, but not that different

The Future

• Build the microformat and tools for various formats into Dojo
• Form an Incubator Activity in the W3C around interoperable widgets
• Get buy-in from other widget platforms to support the microformat.
• Convertors to take widgets built in microformat and turn them into others

Conclusion

• download it