In the last Mobile World Congress, Microsoft give us a official word about new features on Windows Mobile 6.5 like MarketPlace, MyPhone or the new look. However, they forgot to tell us an important one: WM 6.5 will feature Widgets!
Last weeks we have read lots of rumours about it, but it was not clear how Microsoft will use these widgets. At last, yesterday, a member of the Windows Mobile Developer Team explained us this new feature in their blog.
Widgets are a good advance for user, who are going to enjoy using nice looking applications, and a great one for developers, who will able to develope them easier.
WM widgets will be powered by Internet Explorer. Take a look to some outstanding matters about Windows Mobile Widget platform:
- Widgets written using all the Web Technologies (Html, Ajax, JavaScript…).
- Full access to flash and ActiveX controls.
- Look like a normal standalone application.
- Individual app in task manager.
- Own start menu icon.
- The platform implements the latest draft of W3C standard for mobile widget applications.
- Basic things of normal applications like native support for transparent PNGs or Window.XMLHttpRequest object are considered.
On the other hand, don’t forget that widgets already exist in Windows Mobile since, some months backs, the Opera’s widget runtime engine was released. The advantage of the Opera’s platform is that it works in Symbian O.S. too, but it has a significant drawback, it doesn’t expose much device functionality to developers.
Soon we will see how the Windows Mobile Widget performance is.
