Chromed

With their new Chrome browser Google just threw their hat into the ring. Of course we were curious to see how Widgetop would look like:

Not to our surprise it works very well right out of the box because it is based on the WebKit engine (used by Apple for the Safari browser). Google spent a lot of effort to make it the perfect browser for web applications like our Widgetop desktop. It’s really fast because they sped up the javascript engine. Moreover you can easily create an application shortcut which you can put on the Windows desktop, start menu or quick launch (similar to Prism or Fluid):

• Open the Widgetop desktop in Chrome
• Open the menu and select Create application shortcuts
• Choose the shortcuts you want to create

And don’t forget, in addition to your own Widgetop desktop you can create shortcuts to one of Widgetop’s publicly shared desktops.

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Dock Widgetop with Fluid (Mac OS X only)

Quite a while ago we showed you how to integrate the Widgetop webtop into your Windows desktop or your Linux desktop with the help of Mozillas Prism platform. While you can use Prism to add Widgetop to your Mac there is a much better alternative – Fluid. Its current version is much better integrated into the Mac desktop then Prism (but requires Leopard though).

Just download Fluid, run it and create a new entry for Widgetop. You will get:

• A link to Widgetop in your Programs folder.
• Run it and you will see the Widgetop icon appear in the dock like any other Mac application. Just login to your desktop (or create a new account) and your Widgetop desktop is just a click away.
• By choosing Convert to Embedded SSB from the Widgetop menu you can even put your widgets on the Mac desktop itself.

Hints:

• In addition to your own Widgetop desktop you can run one or many of the shared desktops from http://www.widgetop.com/shared.html. Just give them a distinct icon for better differentiation.
• If you want to use better icon you can download and use this:
  

Adding Slideshows to Widgetop

We enhanced the Add RSS Feeds section to easily add image slideshows to your Widgetop desktop. Just enter the URL of an RSS feed which contains images (e.g. from Flickr or Photobucket) and press the Add Slideshow button:

This will add our new Slideshow widget to your dewsktop:

Dashboard Widgets in the browser sidebar

Running iPhone web applications in the browser sidebar becomes more and more popular. And it makes sense because the iPhone and the browser sidebar share the same small width restriction.

Therefore we made the little tweaks to optimize our mobile desktop for the sidebar of Firefox and the Opera panels.

How to run in Firefox sidebar:

• Open http://m.widgetop.com?ForceOnDevice and bookmark the page
• Open the properties for the just created bookmark and check Load this bookmark in the sidebar
• You might want to move the bookmark to the bookmark toolbar for quick access

How to add to Opera Panels:

Just click this link.

Dashboard widgets on your iPhone homescreen

We are happy to announce a new feature:

Now you can run single Dashboard widgets from our catalog standalone without loading your Mobile Widgetop Desktop first. This makes it possible put them on the homescreen of the iPhone and access them very quickly.

How To

• Go to the Mobile Widgetop Desktop with the Safari browser: m.widgetop.com
• Just open the Add Widget page on your iPhone by tapping this icon:
• Browse the catalog and select the widget you want.
• Tap the the new Open as Application button:

• It opens a new browser window with the selected widget:

• If you want to bookmark the widget or put it on your home screen just press the little plus sign at the bottom bar of Safari:

Limitations

The standalone widgets on your home screen won’t make your desktop obsolete because there are a few limitations:

• All widgets of the same type share their settings. This means there can only be one instance per widget type.
• The settings for each widget are stored in a local cookie on the iPhone. They aren’t synced back to our server and you can’t modify them from your desktop computer. If you clear the cookies you will lose all settings (You can remove the settings for a single widget type by tapping the icon on the tool bar).

So the standalone feature will be perfect mostly for tool widgets like calculators, which don’t store any important state and need one instance only.

RSS Awareness Day

Today is the RSS Awareness Day. Don’t miss one of our RSS feeds:

• New Widgets
• Updates Widgets
• Top Widgets
• Featured Widgets

And don’t forget to check our RSS widget which makes it easy to read your RSS feeds on your Widgetop Desktop or the iPhone.

RSS Feeds on Mobile Widgetop

While it is already much easier to add RSS news feeds to your Widgetop desktop we make it much simpler for the mobile and iPhone version of Widgetop as well.

Tap the Add Widget Icon then click the new RSS Icon to open the new Add News Feeds page:

Same as on the desktop version you can search for feeds by keyword or add feeds by their URL.

New RSS Feed: Top Widgets

In addition to our existing RSS feeds for new, updated and featured widgets you can now subscribe to our:

Top Widgets RSS Feed.
http://www.widgetop.com/rss/top.rss.

It is compiled out of the most used widgets by all registered users and updated once a day. You can check it out yourself on the Widgetop desktop with our Widgetop widget.

Please see our syndication page for more details.

Put Widgetop on your iPhone Home Screen

Apple just released an update for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With the new customizable home screen and web clips feature and you can put access to your Dashboard widgets on your main screen so that they are just one touch away. You can even put the Widgetop webclip icon in your Dock.

How To:

• Go to http://m.widgetop.com with Safari.
• Press the new + symbol on the bottom bar
• It will find the Widgetop webclip icon and allows you to change the title
• Press ‘Add to Home‘ and you are done!

Widgetop with Prism on Linux desktops

Source: Wikipedia.org

The Mozilla Labs just released the Linux and Max OSX version of their new Prism project. Now you can run Dashboard widgets with Widgetop on your Linux desktop. Prism for Windows is already available a little longer.