Micro Applications
A few months ago I developed a proof-of-concept widget for statzen. It showed a list of the items on my blog that received the most attention (via the web and feed readers). While I thought that was neat, I also wanted a tag-cloud based on attention. I replaced the top posts widget with a top tags widget.Tonight I revamped the widget to have both the top tags and the top posts. There is a little micro menu in the widget to switch between the views. I am also planning to add more contextual information to the ‘this page’ option with the widget. I think it will be neat to share some of the information statzen has about the page that is currently being viewed in the browser.
I really like the idea of widgets as micro applications. Too many widgets are billboards advertising a service. While I am surely branding the statzen widget, I am more interested in sharing the functionality. I mean, once people know what this thing can do they will want to use it.If you want to see an example of the statzen widget in action check out the right side of jaxn.org.
Tags: development, prelaunch, statzen, widget