I don't usually use widgets or dx gadgets. I like DX as much as anyone here, but I have found that even the simplest widgets crap out at some point. Either they start forgetting where to be positioned, or losing settings, or confusing visibility status, responding slowly or eating memory.

I do like the super icon concept, and used AveDesk with Windows-XP for cool shortcuts, simple meters, and drop style ico<->png and ftp desklets. I am using Windows Sidebar for things like this now.

I prefer having things running under one process, as do most if the popularity of DX-desktop themes over widgets is any indication, but having a dozen or so super icons can start to get unwieldy to create in DesktopX--each themselves consisting of several DX-objects--but still contained in the more focused widget engines. DesktopX is so generally powerful that some of the more interesting widgets are just a focusing of capabilities. Take my Blister-DX meters widget, just as an example. I think it is a cool widget because it exposes a neatly interacting subset of DesktopX capabilities--system monitoring, basic positioning and layout, and color shifts. And c242's Skinnable SysInfo gadget set is awesome because it collects together and maintains for the user a set of the most useful widgets.

Widgets weren't over-hyped. They can, are, and will be popular as clocks, weather infos, and meters on the desktop and on web-spaces and mobile devices. And Desktop-X wasn't over-hyped either.

But the mini-applications of DesktopX are more like widget engines themselves than actual widgets. And the investment : reward ratio for designing and developing mini-applications with DX goes into the red pretty quickly as the number of objects required makes navigation in a list view cumbersome and the complexity invariably introduces mysterious bugs...for something you will most likely be giving away for free it becomes hard to justify the time.

But people are still innovating in the gadget area, particularly with Windows Sidebar. I think the Sidebar captive-audience will encourage more people to develop gadgets, but even with that there is a diminishing return on making things complex and interesting. But there are some cool branded weather gadgets, a decent sudoku gadget and others for the Sidebar that are actually pretty cool. People are still exploring the limits and pushing the envelope with the Sidebar, and with DX supporting it as an export format, among other innovations, it has potential--people are still designing gadgets almost exclusively to be docked, for example, but the sidebar supports traditional undocked desktop gadgets too (or both). I predict applications will have "satellite" objects available as Gadgets for the Sidebar soon, much like a media-player gadget controls a media player app, there may be gadgets for basic functions of your browser, calendar, or email, or search.

Well. I obviously don't think widgets and gadgets have been over-hyped. I can talk about them on and on...

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