What is the difference between app and a widget?

[Camcardshark]

I've always wondered this because them seem to almost be interchangable they way people talk about both... Just looking for some exact answers for a probably pointless question.

Thanks

 

[flyingember]

How it's used

 

[Alli]

An app is an actual program...it does something. A widget is like what you find on your Vista/Win 7 pc where you see your weather or the time. Graphical representation of some small chunk of information.

 

[Camcardshark]

oh ok that actually makes a lot of snese, thanks!

 

[flyingember]

An app is an actual program...it does something. A widget is like what you find on your Vista/Win 7 pc where you see your weather or the time. Graphical representation of some small chunk of information.

if a program does something then under are you saying a widget doesn't do anything? widgets are also programs running on the phone/computer.

in the apple sense, on a Mac I see a calculator, weather, flight tracker, puzzle game, google search, dictionary, unit converter, stock info and movie search widgets. all also apps on the iphone, some doing little more than the Mac widget itself.

Apps and widgets are the same thing, the only difference is the interface. an application is computer code that executes and does something. a widget is computer code that executes and does something. The term widget is marketing fluff to make a product sound better.

case in point, a weather app back end code could be used to run both a full screen app and a small widget. which category would this go in? app? widget? both?

That said, I think the idea of having a home screen where you can select certain pieces of information to show up in a mini format is an excellent one.

 

[SaberSerene]

My definition of an widget is basically a shortcut instead of opening the app itself.

 

[Alli]

Nope, they're not really shortcuts, cause they don't actually take you somewhere. With widgets, what you see is what you get.

 

[flyingember]

Nope, they're not really shortcuts, cause they don't actually take you somewhere. With widgets, what you see is what you get.

again, no.

Look at widgets in the Mac desktop sense. i.e. the google search bar one that launches a browser. This is where Apple will come from.

I say it again. The term widget is a marketing one. it's just a special interface to a program.

 

[Alli]

The google search bar is a shortcut, it's not a widget. The pretty picture of the sun that shows the current temperature is a widget. It is an interface that is the program. A widget can have settings, but will not take you to a deeper experience.

 

[flyingember]

The google search bar is a shortcut, it's not a widget. The pretty picture of the sun that shows the current temperature is a widget. It is an interface that is the program. A widget can have settings, but will not take you to a deeper experience.

Apple - Downloads - Dashboard

here's Apple's widgets. You'll find Google search in it. A large number of them you interface with and do stuff. To show that a phone widget can do something too the Android Google search is a widget in the same way.

again, it's a marketing term. widgets are just little applications. an application is just an executable/package.

I predict apple will call their widget area on the iphone, if introduced, the dashboard. Some kind of internet search will be one of the defaults.

I also predict that at some point you will be able to buy iphone applications where where you can turn on an optional widget view. the widget will run the same code as the full application does for the network connection, location services, database access, authentication and the like.

a widget is just an interface/way to view data. there's nothing special about them in any other way

 

[Alli]

Please listen to episode 22 of my podcast, where a nice software coder explains the difference. I used to think like you, as well. I used to think a widget and a shortcut were the same thing. This explanation was very helpful.

 

[flyingember]

Please listen to episode 22 of my podcast, where a nice software coder explains the difference. I used to think like you, as well. I used to think a widget and a shortcut were the same thing. This explanation was very helpful.

sounds like Apple does it wrong then and their way will become the normal way of thinking of things.

 

[mmkkrk]

Difference between widgets and apps

I've done some research on this subject lately and there is a difference between widgets and apps. Widgets need a "widget engine" in other words a software to drive them, for example a web-browser, dashboard, google desktop, etc. An app is driven by an operating system, like OS X or Vista. There are a variety of widgets and some seem to be apps. For instance, you can play a game through Facebook, like Bejeweled, which is a widget because it has to be driven though the browser using adobe flash player. (That's why occasionally the games will stop working until you download the free flash player updates.) But, you can also download a trial version or buy the app, which is then saved on your computer and run by your computer operating system. Both widgets and apps can be simple or complicated, to look at the surface they are the same. So what truly defines whether it's a widget or app is the language it is written in, which dictates what technology can read/drive it.

 

[spiderman2572000]

widget vs apps

I think widgets are hardware specific while apps are more generic in nature and can work on any mobile that have same OS. Like all android phones can use the same apps and all symbian phones can use the same apps (ofcourse release/version specific), while widgets are strictly mobile set specific.