TECHED: Why Online/Offline Gadgets?


More out of interest than any compelling business need I dropped into Neil Roodyn’s session on Vista Gadgets.

And I have to say I found it quite thought provoking. Neil went through some simple examples but most importantly stressed some of the design considerations to be employed. Designing for Offline (or worse, unexpected disconnection scenarios) from the outset is the most important of course, but then issues of having initial data in the install were covered.

His session had examples including Bus timetable, Routing (via Virtual Earth) and Recipe gadgets.

Neil finished with a few directives summarised as:

  • Build gadgets to work offline
  • Utilise more opportunities (Vista will be on up to 1 billion desktops one day…)
  • Decide which functionality option is correct for the circumstance (eg having huge offline caches can lead to performance issues

However, my main takeaway, and answer to the question of Why is as follows:

Why Vista Gadgets?
Answer: To complement existing applications

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Craig Bailey