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Daniel Davis – Widgets in Theory and Practice

Web Directions Unplugged 2011, Seattle, May 13th 10:30am.

Presentation slides

External slides (PDF)

Session description

In the absence of a “Widgets for Dummies” book being available at your local bookstore, this presentation will try to bring you up-to-speed with what you need to know to start developing widgets.

Split into two parts, we’ll cover the theory behind widgets:

  • seriously, yet another platform to code for?! – vendor and manufacturer support for widgets & compatible development frameworks
  • what widgets are good for – save your users (and yourself) time, money and frustration
  • what widgets are not-so-good for – they’re not a silver bullet!

and widgets in practice:

  • widgets and device compatibility – the good news is also potential bad news
  • screen sizes – resizing and its headaches
  • widget distribution and making money – everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?

You’ll get most out of this talk if you:

  • have heard of widgets but don’t know how to use them
  • are wondering whether widgets could solve a particular problem you have. (i.e. no specific browser)
  • have tried making widgets but got stuck and gave up

About Daniel Davis

Photo of Daniel DavisDaniel is the Web Evangelist for Opera’s Japan office based in Tokyo. His previous work experience includes project management, IT training, web development, software development and system administration in both Japan and the UK, his home country. After studying Japanese and Chinese at university, he grew more and more interested in the flourishing field of IT and the web, learning as much as he could by playing and experimenting with internet-related technologies. His current work promoting web standards and cross-device web development at Opera fits in perfectly with his ideology of openness and equality across linguistic, social and socio-economic borders.

Follow Daniel on Twitter: @ourmaninjapan

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Thoroughly enjoyed Web Directions — met some great people, heard some inspiring presenters and added a whole bunch of things to my to-do list.

Joel Roberts Web Developer