installing windows gadgets in dashboard and v.v.

27 houdini's

27 houdini's

guy with great hairdo
Just curious... those windows guys are developing this thing called Sidebar for Windows Vista, and it works very similar to Dashboard, the widgets (they call them gadgets) are html javascript based just like widgets and konfabulator widgets.

So, it would like to try to install windows gadgets in dashboard (yes i am a bit woozy in the head!), can anyone help me to figure out howto do that?

here's url: http://microsoftgadgets.com/gallery/

i tried the google search gadget (http://microsoftgadgets.com/forums/1683/ShowPost.aspx) because its just javscript and xml (most zipped downloads i cannot open btw), when you download it's in a folder. i tried renaming the folder to .wdgt and see if i can open it... but dashboard won't allow me, so i must be missing something

I am trying this just to see if cross platform widgets are possible (just like developing sites for internet)
Ain't got Vista yet (never will have it probably :-) ) so trying to open widgets in sidebar i could not try...
 
I haven't tried it, but you'll probably run into problems with the JavaScript classes available to widgets vs. gadgets. Widgets make use of Apple's own "system.widget" class, which makes a lot of the widget integration possible. I imagine that Windows gadgets have a similar integration class. There will also be clashing file naming conventions, required preference/XML files, etc.

You could always open the Google gadget in Widgetarium and see what it makes of the situation. Could be a learning experience.
 
OK, I just looked because you aroused my curiosity.

There are a few obvious differences in the basic file setup. A widget has required files such as Default.png and info.plist that aren't included in the gadget. The basic "glue" file of a widget is HTML, whereas in a gadget it's XML. And the gadget seems to make use of a Gadget class, much as a widget makes use of System.Widget.

So those seem to be the most fundamental differences. I don't think it'd be terribly hard to "port", but you'd have to dive into the JavaScript pretty deeply for widgets/gadgets of any complexity. You could also hit a wall if a gadget makes Windows-specific system calls, because porting those to Unix equivalents on OS X is a whole other can of worms.
 
Interestingly, they're doing Dashboard-compatibility for KDE. Since KDE uses Konqueror as its integrated browser and Safari/Dashboard are based on it, it might be easier to find compatibility there.
 
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