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We like lots of widgets, but not all of them, and that's sort of the point: there's a desktop widget for every need and every taste available for free, customized exactly the way you like it, thanks to XWidget. This free app comes with a bunch of ready-made widgets that can check the weather, stock prices, headlines, and messages; display compact slideshows; play video; add and subtract; and anything you can do with a widget. But the really cool thing is the XWidget Designer, a sophisticated tool for creating and customizing widgets. It lets you change the size, color, finish, action, and properties of your widgets. The optional Dashboard and a variety of pop-up Config dialogs make it easy to deploy your widgets, too. Extras include a screenshot tool.
XWidget's features are dispersed in its widgets, in the Dashboard, and in the XWidget Designer, not to mention separate configuration screens and options panels for most widgets and features, too. The Dashboard is a prominent feature in its default mode, though you can customize it, like most of XWidget's features. It displays available widgets in a scrolling panel along the bottom of the screen. Three widgets open with the program: a stylishly mod analog clock face, a compact photo gallery, and an even smaller weather widget. We right-clicked the Weather widget and quickly changed our location to access local weather data. The same menu accesses all kinds of options; for instance, clicking Edit opened the widget in the XWidget Designer, while the Configure option opened a compact properties sheet for quickly setting and locking position and other basic choices.
XWidget has received some significant upgrades since we last tried it, and it's a smooth performer with little in the way of issues, though we did have some trouble displaying the Dashboard from the program's main menu, and many of the supplied widgets still bear names like EkerTime and EkerWeahter (yes, "weahter") but that's hardly more than a quibble. XWidget more than makes up for it with its advanced customization capabilities. The XWidget Designer is this program's hidden attraction: Don't like something? Change it!
XWidget - Enhance your desktop with different widgets - Download Video Previews:Publisher's Description
From XWidget Software Studio:
XWidget is a free desktop customization platform. It's light, handy with powerful visual widget editor and very subtle animations. More fast startup speed, low resources taken, with smooth animation effect.
What's new in this version: Version 1.32 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
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All versions:
4.0 starsout of 21 votes
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Current version:
4.5 starsout of 2 votes
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My rating:
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"HTC Home takes the front seat"
Version: XWidget 1.32
Pros
Takes up less RAM
Cons
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"A promising start - let's see where it goes from here"
Version: XWidget 1.32
Pros
Nicely designed widgets
Easy install & setup
Performance and memory usage seem good
Nice widget editor
easy to customize
Just worksCons
Widgets lack flexibility - no variations (different styles/designs/layouts) per widget
Limited number of widgets because many widgets have a very distinctive design style and don't go well together visually.Summary
The widget engine seems robust and just works. I've been using it for the past month or so.
My biggest criticism is that most widgets lack flexibility and configurability (if one doesn't want to fire up the widget editor and start coding).
E.g. I didn't find any RSS widget that presented the feeds the way I wanted, most only show the title, others have a very unique design that don't match my desktop theme at all.
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