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Netvibes UWA

14.May.2007

The Netvibes Universal Widget API was a released a while ago but finally I’ve decided to take a deeper look. Besides giving you the possibility to create some nice looking widgets, every widget you create will run not only on Netvibes, but also on iGoogle, the Apple Dashboard and even on your own blog/website. And according to the developers other platforms are being considered.

The API is easy to use for those of you who are familiar with JavaScript and AJAX (I don’t include myself on that group). It includes some libraries for handling RSS feeds and several helper functions for handling styles and XHTML coding. In my opinion it still lacks a bit of documentation, but I’m sure if you dig yourself into the libraries code you’ll find every information you’ll need.

I took the opportunity to integrate some webservices information into widgets. First I’ve created a widget that shows a lastfm’s user top artists list. If it just keeps Loading… click on the netvibes button to see it in real action. I also didn’t put non-existing user verification on this widget, but you can go ahead and change the preferences to put your lastfm username. The second widget I’ve created was to help me see my feed readers number, without having to go to the Feedburner website (Not that I don’t like their website, I think it’s very neat). So you can check it here. Again if the Loading… persists click on the netvibes button and add it to your netvibes page. This one has all the verifications but if you want to see your feedburner feed’s stats you have to activate your Awareness API. On your feed page, go to the Publicize tab and choose the Awareness API option. Then activate it, so you can check your feed stats from a external source.

These where just to simple and easy to make examples and I’m sure you have bigger ideas for widgets, so give this API a try.

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