A reader of this blog sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, asking me to consider porting my Hellenic Reverse Directory Lookup widget (HRDL) for Apple’s Dashboard in Mac OS X to the Widsets service provided by Nokia. Over the past year or so I’ve been emailed another two or three times by readers asking me to ‘port’ the widget to several ‘platforms’ including Windows Vista ‘Gadgets’, Yahoo!/Konfabulator widgets etc. The reason I am writing this post in English is because I’d like to express my impression of the Widsets platform along with my explanation as to why I’m not going to bother with porting the HRDL widget to it.
Taking a closer look
After taking a closer look at the Widsets service (I had never paid any attention to it before, although I was aware of its existence) I decided against spending any time working with it. There are several reasons behind my decision:
First, the provided software is slow and clumsy — even on a high end Nokia N-Series phone (N95 8GB), the application is really slow to start and respond to user input or network connectivity. I wouldn’t want to spend any time re-writing the HRDL for such a mediocre platform. With Nokia claiming that the Widsets service is available for ‘300 phones’, it’s safe to bet that the experience and performance of the application is bound to vary considerably among the supported models.
Second, the widgets are written in Java and require a custom UI specified in XML — which means doing away with the existing code (okay that’s not much) and UI that already exists for the Apple version. That’s much more than I’d be willing to do right now especially since…
(Third), I am not convinced that the service is known (let alone used) by many. Contrary to Apple’s Dashboard or the fluid iPhone UI, WidSets is a wholly separate application that does not integrate well with the S60 or Windows Mobile or any other user interface for that matter. If widgets are to be considered useful they have to be instantaneous in appearing and disappearing — similar to what Apple’s Dashboard is on OS X or ‘widgets’ are on the iPhone. In addition, contrary to Yahoo!’s excellent Yahoo! Go 3 Beta software, WidSets seems to be too heavy for current MIDP enabled mobile phones.
Fourth. Given the above, I’m even less convinced that the service is known (or used) by people in Hellas; the widget is clearly of interest to people residing in Hellas.
If you are living in Hellas and are using or are aware of Widsets, leave me a comment below.
Widgets. Speed. Usability.
With the original widget offered under the MIT licence, anyone is free to peruse the code and port the widget to any platform she or he desires, as long as they conform to the licence requirements. Unfortunately, right now, Widsets is far from an appealing platform for me to port the HRDL widget to (or spend time developing any other widget for that matter).
Finally, given the drawbacks of its current software, it’d be very nice if Nokia actually spent some time considering an overhaul of the S60 UI for existing phones (perhaps by offering a free upgrade to S60 R3 FP2) and within that effort support a fluid, snappy version of a ‘widget layer’ — even sans iPhone-like effects. Such an addition would be a joy to use and — I believe — a pretty good reason to invest time and effort in developing some useful widgets for mobile phones. Until then, I doubt porting the HRDL to WidSets or any similar ‘Java-based’ widget engine is worth the time and effort.