Developer's corner

Opera Widgets developer tools: More than technology

Technology enabler

Part of making Web content more easily accessible and useful to mobile users involves offering comprehensive tools for creating advanced but simple, on-demand applications. These applications, or widgets, enable operators to differentiate themselves and their offerings while providing users with convenience and one-click access to pre-selected Web content. Widgets are small and easy-to-build applications made using standard Web technology, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, ensuring that there is a large pool of developers who can build these applications. The resulting widgets greatly enhance the user experience and give operators the chance to increase revenue and customer loyalty across devices. They also allow for interactivity with the development community and the chance to get feedback from both the developer and user communities.

The Opera Widgets SDK provides all the tools needed for creating cross-platform, cross-device widgets. Opera Web applications developer, Hans Tømmerholt, explains, "The Opera Widgets SDK is a collection of tools, libraries, documentation and articles explaining how to develop widgets on various devices. Chief among the tools is the Widget Emulator, which shows how your widget will behave and look on different devices. Opera also supplies Opera Dragonfly*-a tool for debugging and stepping through JavaScript code, and inspecting the state of Web pages and widgets."

Tømmerholt goes on to add that from an operator's perspective, the more developers and widgets there are, the wider the audience the operator can reach. "The Opera Widgets SDK is freely available. By helping to make developers aware of it, operators can motivate more developers to make widgets for their device."

“The Opera Widgets SDK is freely available. By helping to make developers aware of it, operators can motivate more developers to make widgets for their device ”

For operators, Opera Widgets are an excellent application or service delivery platform because they run well across operators' device portfolios, such as, desktop computers, mobile devices and games consoles. This enables a "create-once, deploy-everywhere" model that gives operators the freedom to develop more applications that can be used interchangeably across devices. It is also possible to synchronize widgets across the different platforms for additional use cases, such as creating a family calendar or playing an online game on a PC, pausing it and continuing to play where you left off on another device, etc. The Opera Widgets SDK is not tied to content developers—the Opera Widgets SDK is a developer tool that simply allows operators to take advantage of Opera as a technology enabler.

Making this possible, the Opera Widgets SDK tools guide a relatively straightforward development process for developers:

Opera Widgets SDK development and deployment

Prerequisites to develop:

Standard Web technologies (HTML, CSS, DOM, or JavaScript)

Widget creation:

Resources for graphics, coding and widgets style guide, plus tools for packing and deploying finished widgets; specific issues for addressing cross-platform and cross-device development and optimizationz

Documentation:

Includes Opera Widgets specification, Core DOM Reference, different modes of display (e.g., docked and full screen), connection to multiple servers, storing widget data using the Opera Widgets Preference Store, and the Opera Widgets security model

Tools and libraries:

Widget Emulator, Opera Dragonfly*, DOM inspector, JavaScript libraries for easier widget development and debugging

Beyond technology: Community builder and developer relations

Widgets offer not only a cutting-edge technology to operators and users—they also engender a kind of community of widget developers. Aside from just providing widget technology, Opera supports operators and the development community overall by helping to publicize creative initiatives and get more developers involved in widget creation. Opera supports Vodafone's Betavine initiative, which aims to give developers direct access to end users to get feedback on mobile applications they have created in the Betavine community. The My Opera community runs advertising for the Betavine competition. Also encouraging widget development, Opera is involved in education programs and, for example, the Vodafone MobileWidgetCamp to continue to foster the growth of an active widget-developer community and to continue supporting widget technologies built on open Web standards.

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