clearspring - the widget network.

For those of you into celebrity gossip (I know that widget developers are the target demographic, of course), the Daily Blabber widget is here. It has been spreading around the web after being seeded on the iVillage homepage (bottom right).

Though it’s great being able to keep up with the latest on Brangelina (the Clearspring studio team is loyal to Jen, if you’re wondering), on this project the team enjoyed some experimentation with the treatment of the “grab it” button. This simple little UI element — the way your widget allows users to get a copy for themseves — is one of the most critical parts of any widget design. Without it, and without it being enticing enough to click, the widget is just a stationary thing that a visitor can’t carry with them. In this case, a simple periodic “bounce” of the button and a popup bubble on hover really help encourage the user to take a look. This simple widget is definitely more about content than application functionality, which is all the more reason to make the grab prompt as effective as possible. In any case, the Flash team had fun with it, and like all of the widgets we work on, this widget uses the Clearspring backend — super-scalable distribution, sharing services, and tracking. Give it a shot with your own widgets.

Happy Widgeting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 11:18 pm by Will and is filed under clearspring, widgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.