Opera 9: Widgets are the new Web
Thursday, June 22, 2006 09:17 AM
Opera released version 9 of its browser on Tuesday, adding native BitTorrent support and small Web applications called Widgets.
First announced in beta in April, Opera 9 is the latest step in the company's efforts to make its browser a platform for development as well as a productivity tool.
Widgets are based on standard Web technologies including CSS and JavaScript, but don't always qualify as AJAX in the strictest sense, since they may not be communicating with a remote server. In Opera's guidelines to Widget developers they recommend you make your code capable of working while disconnected from the network.
Opera's approach differs from that of the Mozilla project, which uses XUL, its own UI markup language, to create extensions to its browsers. The company says the advantage of its standards-based approach is that you don't need to learn new technologies to create Widgets. Geir Pedersen, Web applications manager for Opera, told Builder UK that "Web developers can reuse their existing skill sets, and even designers can create Widgets based on what they already know."
Opera is keen that other browser vendors implement Widgets, and is aiming to submit the specification to a standards body. Pedersen said that the company's eventual aim is to have a vendor-neutral standard for applications like Widgets: "We believe in one Web and open standards, so we would hope that they would do this based on the specification that we've put out," he said. "We're definitely open to working with other browser vendors to make sure that in the future we have one spec for this kind of feature. We're also open to bringing this into standardisation, for instance within the [World Wide Web] Consortium."
Pedersen added that some work on generating this consensus has already been done, but that any interested parties should contact Opera. "We'd encourage other implementers to come and talk to us and discuss their implementation plans. We've already been in informal discussions with others, like Mozilla, regarding these specifications. We expect there to be informal development within the community until it can get more formalised."
While there has been some discussion in the Web development community about a system for packaging AJAX components for reuse, Opera hasn't created Widgets with this in mind. Pedersen says that this is a first step aimed at adding simple functions to browsers, rather than a framework for programming objects. The company is agnostic about the subject of more complex packaging.
"We don't have a firm position on that at this point. We are a member of the OpenAJAX Alliance, which is one place where things like this can be discussed. We've released Widgets today because we believe it's a useful feature for end users, and the packaging and distribution format we currently have is sufficient for this area," said Pedersen.
Although he's cautious about what Widgets will be used for, Pedersen does believe they represent a step change in Internet applications, and a new way for Web developers to provide information and services to end users. "This is a new kind of entity on the Net. It's a client-side application that can consume data from different Web sites and different XML services and present it to the user in new ways. You can actually create services without having to operate a Web server, just distribute your program through the Opera Web site," he said.
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