30 years of Windows widgets - from Active Desktop to the Widget Board. Six implementations, six deaths, and the scar tissue that shapes the platform you’d build on today.
And all this time Rainmeter has been superior to whatever Microslop has cobbled together.
Microsoft appears to have realized that widgets shouldn’t compete with applications for desktop space. They belong in the liminal moments of computing - the glance before you unlock, the pause between tasks.
Yea, no, I don’t want that stuff on my lock screen, what I want is the gadgets bar back, on the right hand side, so I can glance and see the info I want to see.
Any motion required, mouse movement, keys, etc, disrupts what I’m doing - may as well launch a full app then.
And this argument about consuming desktop real estate? Nonsense. My laptop screen is 14", my desktop is two 26" monitors. I have real estate. Let users chose the value of screen real estate.
Yeah my desktop is 27" + 24" and has 0-3 icons on it at any given time. It yearns for remotely useful things to display. A long time ago I got frustrated with never being able to keep it organized, so I decided to keep it clean instead. I used the hell out of rainmeter for a while but I remember thinking that was ironic even back then because Microsoft was touting widgets as this revolutionary new thing since windows Vista, yet their implementation of them was terrible.
Let users make decisions about what they want? That’s not how Microsoft works, at least not for a decade now. It’s their computer according to them.
Microsoft can’t figure out widgets cuz it requires the OS to be customizable
Meanwhile, Haiku with Replicants…
