The full history of Windows widgets, from 1997 to today(xakpc.dev)
41 pointsby thunderbong4 hours ago10 comments
  • flobosg4 minutes ago
    Seems to be part of an ongoing series: https://xakpc.dev/windows-widgets/
  • lordkrandel3 hours ago
    The answer is still the same. Don't they get the lesson? People don't want generic "weather" information if they're NOT going out, stock information if they don't invest, inbox headers in a 200px space where a notifications number could suffice, events in town when they are going to work. It's not they HAVE to open an app to get forcefed ads. It's that they WANT to need an app to get ads. Otherwise there's no need to clutter up the empty "desk" metaphore THEY created, with litter.
    • bambaxan hour ago
      Yes, I too hate all notifications; I don't want to have anything pushed in my face; if I need something or some information I will go look for it.

      That said you can do many things with tray apps and tooltips, if you really need to. I have been making Windows tray apps lately; they're nice to make and to use.

      I wonder if there would be an interest for a tray app that would pull some specific (configurable) information at regular intervals, that would be discoverable via mouseover?

    • herbst3 hours ago
      Even after hours of installing third party tools I never heard of before from the internet (secure thing to do right?) I still get a occasional ad to my (single purpose and only Windows) desktop and still each time question why and how anyone would think that's a good idea, or a good place to advertise.
  • my_throwaway2323 minutes ago
    > The constraints you'll hit when building widgets today aren't arbitrary. They're scar tissue.

    You get a point multiplier for rewriting parts of whatever vomit the LLM gave you.

    `1 x 0` is still `0` though.

  • KnuthIsGod2 hours ago
    Widgets seem designed by the great unwashed, for the great unwashed.

    When I need to use Windows, I use Windows Server in Desktop mode, just to escape the ads and widgets and rubbish that the consumer version insists on displaying.

    • AlexDragusin42 minutes ago
      I always read about people and ads in Windows, haven't seen any ad ever (both 10 and 11), I am wondering what's going on (I don't use any of them debloaters either).
  • galaxyLogic2 hours ago
    How about AI-generated widgets? I just tell AI what I want to see in a widget and it creates it?

    Maybe simply "Show news about this topic"?

  • _giuseppe_3 hours ago
    I miss the company that used to do this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwf0EZ50KUY

    I remember installing Windows 98 and it would play an intro ad video to their products and games. Short clips that briskly walk you through them, nothing too crazy just to show you stuff they had. They had a way of welcoming without being over the top. Encarta on its own with the games it had embedded in there was amazing.

    I don’t know what happened but man did we collectively fuck computers up somewhere along the way. We hardly dream anymore but maybe that’s just me getting old idk.

    • throw3e983 hours ago
      Great software still exists, in spaces where capital doesn't choose the priorities. We're rapidly reaching the point where almost every piece of desktop software most people actually need to create things has a competitive free-as-in-beer or even free-as-in-speech option.
    • guerrilla3 hours ago
      I miss that style of ad. IBM, Lucent, AT&T and many others used to do them, especially on the financial channels.
  • russellbeattie2 hours ago
    Widgets always seems like a cool idea. Tons of helpful little utility apps that are quick and easy for users to view or access and developers to create. Seems great, right?

    Then everyone realizes there are only a handful of things that are actually useful and worth the screen space. Clock, calendar, weather, stocks. Maybe one or two more like todo list, post-it note, battery level, search bar, alerts, messages. That's about all I can think of.

    From DOS PCs to smart phones, the idea is resurrected again every few years. A company will decide widgets are an awesome idea, create an over-developed "open" widget platform, excitedly add it to their UI, only to later decide that maintaining it isn't worth the effort and it quietly goes away. Then a few years later the cycle starts again with better widgets this time! And so it goes.

    At this point it seems like it needs to be some sort of fundamental law of computing: Any device with a GUI will inevitably have some sort of widget capability that is added, removed, redesigned and added again at least once during its lifetime.

  • dartharva2 hours ago
    Just here to appreciate this article's clear and pleasant layout.
  • sublinear3 hours ago
    While it is the original title, it's clickbait.

    No platform has ever "killed" off widgets, and users love them as long as there's a good variety of high quality ones available.

    The first thing I always do with a new phone is make sure I have my preferred widgets for weather, email, maps, calendar, and to-do. As long as they stay in the periphery providing ambient information and the occasional interaction, being without them is almost unthinkable.

    Maybe the only slight improvement in decades has been the smartwatch.

  • jauntywundrkind3 hours ago
    Because widgets are amazing & we are all just quietly hoping for a good breakaway easy travelling widget thing.