Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim Twittered earlier today from the Widget Summit, "Just finished my talk at Widget Summit announcing that Netvibes widgets works now on Vista, Live.com, and Yahoo Widgets." This is great news for widget fans, like me, who are often frustrated to find that a module they like on one platform (say, Netvibes) isn't available on another (Yahoo) or vice versa. Today, when it comes to widgets, no matter which platform you use, you lose.
Netvibes' Universal Widget API (UWA) is a big step in the right direction. It's been developing since March of this year and is finally reaching a level of refinement that makes it usable by consumers. (For the inside word, go to the developer's site.)
This is Opera with two widgets running. The one on the left is a Netvibes UWA widget added from Netvibes' directory. The one on the right came from Opera's own directory.
Although the technology works as advertised, early adopters will find their choices limited. Of the nearly 90,000 Netvibes widgets, only 1,000 or so are built in the new UWA format. I found that many of the most popular (and oldest) widgets were not yet available for other platforms. Likewise many RSS-based widgets. Krim told me Netvibes will be converting widgets over the next few weeks. Here's the current directory of UWA widgets.
UWA Netvibes widgets can be easily added to iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Opera, Windows Vista, and Windows Live. Yahoo's Widget Engine isn't an option yet for any modules, though. Krim jumped the gun on announcing it.
The procedure for adding a Netvibes UWA widget to a different platform varies, but is straightforward. For Web platforms, like iGoogle, you just click on the iGoogle button from the Netvibes widget directory page, and then confirm when you're redirected to your iGoogle page. For desktop platforms, like Vista or Opera, you download and install the widget file from within the target app or OS itself, and click through a security pop-up.
While not as universal--yet--as the acronym aspires to, the concept of platform-independent widgets is great. It's what real people want. It's also what developers need: it reduces the risk of developing a widget, and could encourage developers to put more creativity and effort into their work.
Netvibes' new superfast mobile version.
Single-page aggregator Netvibes quietly launched a mobile version of its site in February. It was a bit of a hack: If you created a "mobile" tab, then when you visited Netvibes from your mobile, the feeds you put in that tab would show up.
Today, Netvibes has gone to the next step with two new mobile sites. The lightweight mobile version of the site, m.netvibes.com, doesn't require any special tabs. On your mobile you can select any tab you've created on your desktop or laptop, and it displays almost everything, formatted for the small device. Horizontal scrolling is dropped, for example, and everything goes vertical. However, some widgets don't work, and they just don't show up. I couldn't display my Flickr photos, for example.
The iPhone version of the same page. Better. But slower.
iPhone users get a more capable site, which, since it relies on the capable Safari browser, displays widgets with more fidelity and does a good job with graphics. It also looks really sharp on an iPhone display.
Mobile Netvibes seems to default to the lightweight site on Windows phones, and to the iPhone site if you're running the Safari browser, but you can override this and visit the iPhone version directly at iphone.netvibes.com.
Either way, this new capability adds a lot of functionality. I think it makes the service a great RSS reader (among other things) for on-the-go users.
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