What is a Widget

Answered: What is a Widget?

If you’ve spent any time at all surfing the web, it’s likely that you’ve seen many widgets. You’ve probably even used them on numerous occasions. By definition, a widget is simply a representation of a control that can be manipulated by a user.

You've Used Widgets Before

When you click a button on a website to navigate from one screen to another, you are actually using a widget. The button is an on screen control, and when you click it to issue a command, you are manipulating the control. The term widget, used in this context, is considered to be an abbreviation for ‘’window gadget’’.

Every graphic user interface is characterized by the presence of widgets, including desktop and server applications as well as websites. In addition to buttons that users click to issue commands, other common widgets include scroll bars, text boxes, drop down lists, data entry fields and navigational features.

Understanding the Function of Widgets

Widgets basically represent intuitive, user-friendly visual representations of instructions that tell the computer what to do. In the days before graphic user interfaces became the standard, users had to be able to recognize and manipulate code in order to issue commands. Now, thanks to widgets, commands can quickly and easily be issued by the click of a button or navigational arrow.

Using Widgets in Web Design

One of the most basic principles of web design is the fact that you need to make sure that any web page you design is intuitive and user-friendly. One of the best ways to make sure that users will have an easy time navigating your website is to effectively incorporate a variety of different widgets into the design of your pages.

While programming skills are necessary to create widgets from scratch, it’s not difficult to find pre-existing widgets that you can easily incorporate into your own web design efforts. You can also utilize a variety of simple authoring tools, such as the one available on Yahoo! Widgets to make your own widgets.

Finding Widgets to Use

• Widgipedia is one of the best resources for locating widgets. This website is a leading widget resource, offering a wide variety of web and desktop widgets. Regardless of the platform you use, you’ll be likely to locate options for just about every widget need you might have on this website.

• Widget Box is another excellent resource for locating all types of widgets. You can search by tag, making it easy to locate widgets appropriate for the projects you are working on at any given point in time.

• Good Widgets has several photo widget options that you can try for free and purchase for less than three dollars. You can choose from several photo gallery styles, a number of varieties of slide shows, thumbnail images, an interactive picture book, and more.

• Wauw Photo Widget is a free ware widget that allows you share photos from your cell phone with friends and family members instantly. Simply have your contacts place the widget on their desktops, and the image they see will refresh every time you update the image stored in the widget on your digital camera.

Understanding What is a Widget

Now that you know what a widget is, it’s easy to understand why they’re so important in web design. Widgets are an integral component of the design of any website. When selecting widgets for the web pages you are creating, be sure to consider the needs of the people who are likely to use the site. Your goal should be to make interacting with the site as simple as possible, and using widgets wisely is the best way to reach that objective.