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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Konfabulator Creates Beautiful Desktop Widgets
This is one of those great discoveries that keeps you tinkering all day. I discovered Konfabulator and the rest was history. Here's why:

"Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

"What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today's advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X."

The screenshot is a snippet of my actual desktop. I now have a cool RSS reader, battery gauge, live weather forecast, Wifi signal meter, calendar, and so many others, it's just hard knowing what to keep on the desktop at all times, and what to pull up when you need it. (Like the very cool flight tracker.) There are web-cams and picture frames and everything can be dragged and placed on the desktop and then customized to be solid or almost invisible. Anyway, I could go on and on, or just try it yourself. The download is free and the graphics are extraordinary.

Why haven't these guys gotten more press?

# Permalink Posted at 3:28 PM 13 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

I assume youve heard about Apple's Dashboard, which acording to the makers of confabulator is a rip-off of their product.

# posted by Justin 11:20 PM

looks similar to superkaramba for linux....looks good!

# posted by Anonymous 12:39 AM

If I wanted useless crap sucking up my cycles I'd probably go with Kapsules. It's written by people who know Windows and haven't crufted together some Macrap software in a semi-broken way and then asked for $$$ like with Konfab.

# posted by Anonymous 1:02 AM

Kapsules may know Windows, but they don't seem to know how to display a friggin' screen shot on their web page:

"Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'imgsrv'.

"there was an error showing this image. please refresh the page"

What? So I can continue to see the same error telling me to refresh the page. Heh! I'm not falling for that one again.

Yeah, I'll trust that software.

# posted by Anonymous 5:59 AM

I tried Konfabulator on my laptop last night and I like it. Thanks for the tip!

< shock! > Bill, you use AIM?! OMG! You should dump that bloatware and try Miranda! Almost no screen footprint and uses less than 10% the resources that AIM uses.

# posted by Jason in Oregon 9:45 AM

Theres also another product out there called Samurize. I've used it for about a year and like it quite a bit.

# posted by Anonymous 1:58 PM

There's another product out there call Samurize that I use. Sounds exactly the same, but it's free.

# posted by RisingFish 2:03 PM

I've had this in Gnome for well... ever since Gnome came out.

I like when Windows users get all giddy about some app that's been a part of Linux for years.

# posted by Anonymous 4:03 PM

Tried it on my computer and I like it. So did the wife. Problem, put it on her machine and nothing. Program loads and installs but won't run. Same set-up as mine just slower...hehehe.

# posted by JD 4:30 PM

Oh, hey guys. Welcome to last year... 8^)

Konfabulator is a really neat toy. Arlo Rose groused about the Tiger Dashboard because it seems similar to Konfabulator. But in reality Apple's had something similar to this for most of the Mac's life: Desktop Accessories. Little apps with a small footprint which you can open and close at will.

There are technical differences between Konfabulator and Dashboard, but the biggest difference is that the Dashboard stays hidden until you call it up.

Not so great if you want all the widgets cluttering up your desktop (and they do look cool-I especially like having the calendar on the desktop) but I think it's a bit more elegant.

The reason the PC version hasn't gotten much buzz is because there ARE other apps which do what Konfabulator does; many of them have been around for years-Object Desktop for one; and some of them are free. In other words, it's nothing new, no matter how much better it may be than the competition.

# posted by Sir Not Appearing in this Blog 12:33 PM

I checked out Object Desktop but Konfabulator's graphics are just so much better. They have taken things to a whole new level, andno offense to the Mac heads, but on my Windows desktop, they don't feel like a bunch of Mac icons.

Meanwhile, my art director Brenda who loves the Mac platform more than people - she loves them too. It truly brings us all together.

Kum ba ya.......

Send more platforms and I will check them all out.

# posted by Alice 2:28 PM

Someone commented that Kapsules was better so I tried it but it seems it still has a way to go before it irons out some serious bugs in it. So then I tried Konfabulator and I was amazed by the graphics, the number of avialable widgets, and the stability and intuitiveness of the software.

# posted by Anonymous 3:12 PM

See?! I gave up on these things myself years ago, but the graphics are incredible.

When I got people on my staff to try them, they flipped out. This company needs to advertise or do something because this is great software.

# posted by Alice 8:08 PM

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