Introducing home screen widgets and the AppWidget framework. One exciting new feature in the Android 1.5 SDK is the AppWidget framework which allows developers to write "widgets" that people can drop onto their home screen and interact with. Widgets can provide a quick glimpse into full-featured apps, such as showing upcoming calendar events, or viewing details about a song playing in the background. When widgets are dropped onto the home screen, they are given a reserved space to display custom content provided by your app.
Users can also interact with your app through the widget, for example pausing or switching music tracks. If you have a background service, you can push widget updates on your own schedule, or the AppWidget framework provides an automatic update mechanism. At a high level, each widget is a BroadcastReceiver paired with XML metadata describing the widget details. You can easily add widgets into your existing app, and in this article I'll walk through a quick example: writing a widget to show the Wiktionary "Word of the day. " Facebook Widgets. Facebook Releases New “Fan Box” Widget to Turn Website Visitors. In a move to increase the power of Facebook Pages, Facebook has just released a new widget that allows brands and businesses to share status updates from their Facebook Page – and get new Facebook fans – on any website. The new “Fan Box” widget, built on Facebook Connect, allows Page owners to put a piece of their Facebook Page anywhere on the web.
Facebook says the Fan Box widget is designed to help convert website visitors into Facebook fans. It’s a smart move by Facebook to make it easier for brands and businesses to encourage more of their customers to become fans of their Facebook Pages. “Users can view the most recent posts from the Page, see a list of other fans (including their friends), and, most importantly, become a fan without leaving the site,” Facebook Product Manager Mark Kinsey says. “Additionally, if a user visits the site and isn’t logged in to Facebook, the user can log in and become a fan directly inline as well.” How should the new widget be implemented? 25 Great Blogger Widgets. Many people think that Blogger lacks in all of the extra goodies you can add to other platforms like WordPress, but it simply isn't true.
By using widgets you can customize your blog as much as you like by just adding little snippets of code to the sidebars. Allow users to talk to you via IM, see what your most popular posts are, or even read news from sites such as Mashable. With these 25 widgets, you can create an even more powerful way of communicating with your visitors, just make sure you don't overload them with too many! What are some of your favorite widgets for use on Blogger? Communications Widgets Google Talk - Give visitors the ability to talk to you via Google Talk directly from your blog sidebar. Jaxtr - Create a widget that allows people to call you on the phone without revealing the phone number to them. Meebo Me - Meebo Me will allow you to create a chat box that you can install on your Blogger page, giving you the chance to converse with visitors to your site. Social Widgets.