Yahoo! Widget Engine

Yahoo! Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator) provides the native environment for Yahoo! small applications (widgets).

Discontinued project

Although Yahoo! has shut down this project, the application is still functional and you can even run any widget you might find on the Internet as the Yahoo! Widget Gallery was closed on April 11th 2012.

Built-in widgets

The software comes packed with a few widgets, such as the Analog / Digital Clock, Battery, Day Planner, iTunes Remote, Picture Frame or Yahoo! Finance / Mail Checker / Weather.
Other widgets that have become very popular over the years comprise a world time zone clock, various RSS feed readers, countdown timers or webcam viewers.

Working with the dock

Yahoo! Widget Engine features a dedicated HUD (heads-up display) to quickly showcase all the open widgets at once. This is available through a customizable hotkey or by clicking on the round shaped icon at the bottom of the dock – the place where all your open widgets are shown in a smaller and lighter way. The dock also provides you with the possibility of choosing which widgets are shown on desktop or in the HUD mode only.

Individual configuration settings for each widget

Each and every widget fires up a new process when executed, just like Chromium-based Internet browsers do with their tabs. This makes it impossible for the whole engine to be affected by the malfunction of a single element.
General widget options include Window Level selection (Normal or Keep on top / bellow other applications) and the Ignore Mouse, Prevent Dragging or Opacity options. Other customizable settings include Color selection for both edge and face.

Grab from the Internet more widgets

Since Yahoo! discontinued their support for the widget community, you can search the web and easily find the widget you are looking for. Softpaz features a whole category of them (entitled Windows Widgets) organized in several sub-categories consisting of Alarms & Clocks, Audio, Finances & Business, Games, Internet Radio, News, System Utilities, Video or Webcams.

Bottom line

Yahoo! Widget Engine is not one but many things. It’s responsible for many great widgets and the only way you are able to enjoy them. Windows comes with a gadget gallery and support for such small apps too, though. Whether Yahoo! made a smart move by shutting down the project just to channel their resources towards the Yahoo! Connected TV widget platform should not be our concern and even though the collection of available widgets will not grow, it holds a fair amount of very interesting and helpful items.