Yahoo! Widgets 3.0 Released

Yes, finally. Yahoo! Widget Engine (nee Konfabulator) was just released today. It’s a huge step forward both in end user benefit and developer features.

For users, there are all new Widgets that connect to Yahoo! properties (Search, Maps, Flickr, Y! Photos, Notepad, 360) and some significant fixes, particularly for Outlook users who used PIM Overview (now called Day Planner). It also brings some performance improvements, particularly on Mac. We were encountering problems with Cocoa’s lack of support for overlapping sibling views. Apparently the answer in the past was to just draw everything all the time. But that wasn’t flying so well these days with more complex Widgets. So I changed it to bypass the Cocoa view system and just use the same basic view system we do on Windows. We tried to layer it at first but we got some weird overdrawing issues with rotated items. Turns out eliminating the Cocoa draw path sped us up considerably (very user-perceptable in some Widgets such as Atomic Timer).

For developers, there is a whole new set of features: a native XML parser, Level 1 DOM support , XPath, XMLHttpRequest, subviews, scroll bars, and much more. The interesting thing is that I still have a whiteboard full of things we still want to do for the future. We’re hardly done making this platform as powerful as we want it to be.

Anyway, I’m very glad this is now out the door as we can start concentrating on some of the features I’ve been dying to do for some time. Things that will really up the ante for what you can pull off in a Widget. But first I must rest and do my Christmas shopping!

Yahoo! Year End Party

Last Saturday, I had the interesting opportunity to go to not one but two holiday/year end parties. One for my wife’s company, and then topping off the night at the Yahoo! Year End Party. Because of the logistics of getting from one party to the other, we figured it was going to be tough to hook up with our friends there. We were late, and we got to the hotel (which we stayed at post party, but we needed to check in and shuttle over to the convention center), dropped our stuff off and proceeded to leave. When the elevator opened, all our friends were in the elevator. That was a Twilight Zone moment. I mean, what are the chances that would ever happen in a bazillion years. I think we all just sat there for a minute looking at each other while “Hey! I know you!” settled in. We could not have planned that better.

I have to say that the Yahoo! party was out of control. That was crazy. It reminded me of a party we had when we finally shipped Mac OS X. Apple rented out Hangar One at Moffet field and we had crazy buffets/drinks, etc. But this Yahoo! party was like that Apple party times ten. It’s the only party I’ve ever been to that’s actually been mentioned in the news. The entire theme of the party was the Louisiana Bayou. There was a casino with fake gambling, open bars EVERYWHERE (which is primarily where you could find us), and video games. Each bar/place was named after various places in New Orleans. The headline act was Earth, Wind & Fire, though there were other acts as well, in the main room and in the casino room. They would also take your portrait if you wished. I would say that in general it’s a bad idea to have your picture taken at the end of the night when the photographer is in a bad mood and you are a little (ok, perhaps more than a little) intoxicated. Not a pretty sight. I felt absolutely awful the next day and vowed to never repeat that again. But I have to say, in thinking back to the party, I’d do it all over again in a second. I think I’d make sure to drink more water, eat more food, and take more aspirin! When I think of all the mini-meatballs they had that I didn’t eat, I shed a tear.

All in all it was a great time!

I (now) Want an iPod Video

Originally, when the new iPods came out, I have to admit that I thought they weren’t very exciting. I know I didn’t want to watch Desperate Housewives while on the run. They did look cool, but I just didn’t feel compelled. Recently, I’ve been closer to wanting to buy one just because the screen on it is sooooo nice. Almost PSP quality. And remember, the PSP is actually from the future. The Japanese have time machines and they can go a few years into the future and bring back electronics. That’s the only explanation I have for the coolness of the PSP and its amazing screen at such a low price. Isolinear technology! But I digress.

Just yesterday however, I realized that I must buy an iPod Video. Why? The answer is obvious: they have Battlestar Galactica now! How cool is that!? Any questions about the purchase have been erased from my mind. And since I just sold my old Gen 3 iPod and my Tungsten T3 on eBay last week, I am just rolling in dough. To the Apple Store!