A widget is a mini-application that you can add to an existing web page to enhance it in various ways. Widgets visualize the data on the page, add additions and action icons to items on the page, provide data to other widgets, and see information that has been extracted from the page by Extractors.
There are several ways to add a widget to a page. If Mash Maker believes that you might find a particular widget for the current page then it will suggest that widget on the toolbar. Mash Maker suggests both widgets and Mashups on this toolbar. Widgets are shown in blue.
If the widget you want is not suggested on the toolbar then you can find it yourself using the sidebar. Click on the sidebar toggle button to open the Mash Maker sidebar, then double-click on the widget you want to add it to the page.
Mash Maker allows one to arrange the sizes and positions of both the widgets on the page, and the annotations added by a widget. Each widget window can be moved and resized just like a window in a normal windowing interface. A widget can be dragged using it's title bar, and resized using the gripper in the bottom-right corner. In addition, if the widget has a web page about it then one can open that page by clicking on the icon on the left of the title bar.
The widget title bar has a collection of icons on its top right hand corner. The cross icon removes the widget from the page. The minus icon minimizes the widget, and hides all the annotations it has added to sub-items. The spanner/wrench icon allows one to edit the widget Settings.
The additions added by the widget can also have their layout adjusted by the user. Additions can be dragged and resized just like the widget itself. When the user adjusts the addition for one item, Mash Maker automatically makes the corresponding adjustment for the additions for the other items.
Mash Maker allocates an area of the top of the page to the workspace. This is an area above the normal page that has space for widgets. Widgets can be placed either inside the workspace, or anywhere on the normal page. You can resize the workspace by dragging the resize-bar at the bottom.
The behaviour of a widget is controlled by its settings. You can edit the setting for a widget by clicking on the spanner/wrench icon to open the settings panel. When you have got the settings how you like them, click on the "Apply" button to save them and apply them to the widget.
If you save a combination of widgets as a Mashup then the settings will be remembered as part of the mashup.
A widget is able to visualize and enhance the data on the page by reading The Data Tree. A widget can not only see the data that has been extracted from the page by Extractors, but can also see data that has been added to the page by other widgets.
Many widgets exist primarily to provide data to other widgets. For example the Find Address widget finds addresses for items on the page and adds them to the data tree, so that they can be used by visualization widgets such as Google Maps.
You can browse the The Data Tree by going to the
If you find a combination of widgets that you believe is useful for the current page, then you can save it as a Mashup by clicking on the "star" icon on the toolbar. This will allow you to easily come back to the same mashup later, and will cause the mashup to be suggested to other users when they look at similar pages.
If you think a widget is good or bad for a particular kind of page then you can tell Mash Maker this by voting for or against it. Mash Maker uses these votes to decide which widgets to suggest on the toolbar, and to decide the order that widgets are listed in in the sidebar.
You can explicitly vote for or against a widget by clicking on its voting buttons in the sidebar. Mash Maker will also give a widget an implicit vote if you Mashups a mashup that started with that widget.
A similar voting system is also used for Mashups.
Mash Maker provides an open Widget API that allows you to easily create your own widgets. Creating a widget is little harder than creating a normal web page.
Mash Maker also supports use of Google Gadgets. While a Google Gadget cannot do as much as a full-blown Mash Maker widget, there are a lot of useful Google Gadgets out there, and Mash Maker makes it easy for you to import them into Mash Maker.
