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The weakness of gadgets

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The weakness of gadgets

from WinCustomize Forums
I dig gadgets. I really do.

Well, okay, I lie. As someone who has DesktopX installed, I think objects are vastly inferior to widgets. I see the plus of objects not needing DX installed, blah, blah, blah. But for those of us who have DesktopX already, gadgets just really, really suck. Oh, and as an aside, it would appear I feel like whining today.

Why do I think gadgets are inferior to widgets? There are a number of reasons:

1) They don't auto-install. A small point, sure, but a point nonetheless. If I download a widget, open the zip file and double click, the widget runs AND drops itself in my Widgets folder. It is all about convenience, and in my sloth I can't tell you how many gadgets never stayed on my system because I double clicked from the zip, then closed the zip, only to realize I didn't manually extract that gadget somewhere.

2) They don't respond to F9 and F10. This is huge for me. Widgets responding to these keys (either to bring to the front or to hide completely) was actually the functionality that got me to finally use DesktopX. I don't like lots of things cluttering my desktop, so I love being able to hit F10 and make them all go away. And when I want to change the song, see the temp, date, news bit, etc. I love to be able to hit F9 and have my widgets come to the front. With gadgets I have to manually bring it to the front, or minimize all my other windows. Again, a HUGE step back in terms of convenience when it comes to gadgets vs. widgets.

3) You can't customize them. Heck, this is WinCUSTOMIZE, so this should be a no brainer. There are a number of widgets that I have downloaded, imported, looked at their scripts and then changed something small, or changed a font, a color, or an image, to make the widget behave a little more how I would like. All for personal use, of course. But the fact that I can't import a gadget, tweak it a little to make it fit my personal style a bit more, or even get scripting ideas, means they are far inferior to widgets IMO.

Again, I understand the reason behind gadgets. But I don't understand the reasoning behind only releasing the gadgets over here at Wincustomize.com. Isn't that what DesktopGadgets.com is for? It is a shame to head to the WIDGET section, only to seem some nice, new toy is actually a castrated widget (aka gadget).

Bring on the "shut up and make it yourself" bitch-slaps.
27,389 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from JoeUser Forums Top
Thanks for the welcome
Christmas Day falls on December 25. It is preceded by Christmas Eve on December 24, and in some countries is followed by Boxing Day on December 26. Some Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on January 7, which corresponds to December 25 on the Julian calendar. December 25 as a birthdate for Jesus is merely traditional, and is not thought to be his actual date of birth. Much respect!
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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The Political Machine 2024
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top

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Me, too....[re #26]...

Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Weird. Re #26 I just read that paragraph from the Wikipedia article on Christmas. Don't know why he posted it here.

It's strange I never realized there were gadgets mixed in with the widgets before. I agree that they should be kept in seperate sections. As to the original post I agree with all three points to a degree. I made a gadget once back when I knew next to nothing about DX, but that was only because I looked at the 3 options (object, widget, gadget) as ranging from 'okay' to 'superior' so I figured hey, SUPER-SIZE ME! Since then I have found widgets to be far superior to gadgets from a customizing standpoint and I have never made a gadget again. The other day I came to realize one of the more important uses of gadgets. Someone had seen my ATW! Global Clock on my friend's desktop and wanted to use one too. Without thinking about it I was like 'well just tell him where to download'. My friend then reminded me that the person did not have Desktop X. My friend said something to the effect of me needing to make a stand-alone version, and he was right. Gadgets are for those people who would like to use the cool stuff we DXers use but do not want to all the hassle of installing yet another program when it doesn't do anything but display the time, weather, and news. Yes, to those who are not into scripting that's basically all DX does for them. In my opinion gadgets are like all products in the real market place. It's all about the average end-user and anticipating their needs. Think about it, when you buy a DVD player or a digital camera from the store you're not going to take it home, crack it open and start tweaking it to your customizing needs. You make sure when you buy it that it has all the options you want, and so do the makers of the products. When you make a gadget you have already anticitpated the fact that the end-user doesn't have DX. If you go even further and anticipate all the options and customizing needs of the end-user then I think that's when a gadget surpasses a widget in usability, practicality, and value. It's alot to ask for coders to anticipate the whims of the end-user but I guess it's something to strive for, just like all products we see in the market everyday. I think it's all really up to the creators to make the average end-users and indeed us DXers take gadgets more seriously as both useful and customizable. That's my 2 cents.