- From: Marcos Caceres <m.caceres@qut.edu.au>
- Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 15:35:48 +1000
- To: "Grassel Guido (Nokia-NRC/Helsinki)" <guido.grassel@nokia.com>
- Cc: bert@w3.org, "WAF WG (public)" <public-appformats@w3.org>
On 5/3/07, Grassel Guido (Nokia-NRC/Helsinki) <guido.grassel@nokia.com> wrote: > > Marcos, WG, > > On 5/2/07 7:54 AM, "ext Marcos Caceres" <m.caceres@qut.edu.au> wrote: > > > As an aside, you raise a point that we seem to be continuously > > encountering: that is, what exactly is a widget? In technical terms, > > the widget specification will probably define a widget as a packaged > > collection of files that may include an optional manifest file capable > > of being extracted and instantiated on a widget engine. The definition > > itself does not speak of functionality/experience afforded by a > > widget. I guess widget engine is any software capable of extracting, > > processing, and presenting a conforming widget package. We don't > > expect our definition of a widget to match a user's experience or > > definition of a widget. > > Could we limit what a Widget it by saying: > - A Widget always has a user interface. I would be reluctant to say that a widget "always" has a user interface. I can envision widgets being run as services that contact web services based on system events but don't necessarily have a user interface (although the widget engine will usually provide a UI to start and close a widget). Eg: an intranet widget that monitors CPU usage on a computer and contacts a hard-coded URL if the CPU usage goes over a certain threshold. The bootstrapped file might just contain: <!doctype html> <script src="Resources/cpumonitor.js" type="text/javascript"></script> I would be fine with saying that widgets *generally* have a user interface, or something to that effect. > - The user interface is defined by means of some markup documents that can > dynamically be modified by a scripting language. -- I wonder if the TAG has > created some prose that is language independent and could be referred to > from the definition of what is a Widget. I am unaware of such text, but I'll try to take a look. Anyone else know? -- Marcos Caceres http://datadriven.com.au
Received on Monday, 7 May 2007 05:35:52 UTC