As promised, the team at Netvibes, the very popular customizable homepage, has released the developer preview of their Universal Widget API (UWA). Widgets developed using this API work not only on Netvibes but many other widget platforms and blog systems: Google IG, Apple Dashboard, and so on. It also includes the ability to widgetize any RSS feed. A good way to learn more is with this set of screenshots and screencast.
You can see our updated Netvibes API entry here.
In April the UWA runtime will be released as open-source and the Netvibes ecosystem will accept UWA widgets natively. For more on the UWA announcement, see the official Netvibes blog.
We’ve listed the first mashup using this new API: the Netvibes Digg widget. This widget will display the latest items from the Digg website. You can change its preferences to point to change the minimum number of diggs and count of displayed items. More than just RSS, it displays both the item content and images.
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2 Responses to “Netvibes Universal Widget API”
at 5:31 am
To be truly universal, shouldn’t widgets being developed with their engine be deployable on more than the 3 they’ve got right now?
Good effort though!
at 11:12 am
[...] The NetVibes Universal Widget is making its way out. We’ll be supporting it, for sure. Now we need access to the entire data structure of one’s NetVibes account - to faciliate movement between other dashboard systems - like PageFlakes. Clearly these widget aggregator platforms are a key part of the base spec for DLAs - and it’s important that Tariq and company keep their leadership fresh - by helping to create and promulgate a format that can represent one’s dashboard settings. Perhaps a variant of OPML? Michael Arrington puts some perspective on this - and why its important for NetVibes to keep their edge and keep pushing the envelope forward. [...]