April 25th, 2007
S60 Summit: Widgets extend the functionality of S60
Nokia made an announcement last week that will allow S60 mobile device users to enhance their mobile web experiences. Widgets will be coming to Feature Pack 2 devices in the third quarter of 2007 and I did not have time last week to try to understand this functionality since I was traveling for business and wrapped up with a maritime salvage project. While here at the S60 Summit I was able to meet with a Nokia representative and actually view and try a demo of widgets running on a S60 N95 device. Widgets appear as applications that you can file in the S60 folder structure and then simply launch by selecting the Widget. These are small and more easily developed applications that integrate with the amazing S60 Web Browser. There are reports of developers being able to create a widget in the span of a couple of days and then roll it out for usage by an end consumer and we will be seeing more of this development capability during the event.
Web Run-TIme allows developers to create new and migrate existing widgets from the desktop (Mac OS X widgets) to S60 with a minimal effort. Nokia foresees widgets connecting to Web 2.0 services, internet content, and to core applications. The tools, documentation, and SDK for widgets will be available in the third quarter of 2007 via Forum Nokia. After trying the WeatherBug and Reuters widgets, I look forward to an even better mobile browsing experience on S60 devices later this year.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
