Yahoo! Widget Engine4.5.2x10A50

WATCH OUT!!! Some irresponsible individual on the developer's staff made the default preference to start Yahoo Widgets on restart or log in. Turn it off in Yahoo Widget preferences.

I used YahooWidget for years with satisfaction on Yosemite. Unfortunately you did not deign to make her(it) compatible on High Sierra and I thus got rid of it. I have of to look for substitution applications for some widgets but there is nothing for Dashbord. What a pity!!!

I'll say that this is definitely one durable set of widgets! Amazingly, the Mac version (I started with this back when Arlo Rose developed it as Konfabulator, before Yahoo bought them up) is still working under Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), and from a quick initial try under OS X El Capitan (10.11), it looked like it's still working there, as well(!). Now, maybe if I learn Javascript, I could develop some new widgets for this... ;-) Oh, I did turn off the check-for-update part (I forgot if that's in the Widget engine on the menubar, or within individual widgets), since IIRC, that was giving some error message a while back.

Confabulator/Yahoo Widget Engine lives on in "Connected TV", as of this post, Sony, Samsung, VIZIO, Toshiba, & Hisense HDTVs use it: http://developer.yahoo.com/connectedtv/

Yahoo widgets was infinitely better than OSx widgets, but many widgets for mac have gone by the wayside, perhaps the whole app things has destroyed the idea of widgets and many Geeklets give a better use. However it always wins out over mac osx widgets in that you can show them all on the desktop and they are often more controllable. Amnesty helps with displaying osx widgets but it is a bit creaky these days, and i started to use some of these yahoo widegets again and had forgotten how good they were.

WATCH OUT!!! Some irresponsible individual on the developer's staff made the default preference to start Yahoo Widgets on restart or log in. Turn it off in Yahoo Widget preferences.

My favorite Yahoo Widget was the Daily Planner, which would show you what's in iCal for today and tomorrow. But it hasn't worked since Leopard. (The Dashboard widget iCal Events can be moved to the desktop, but dashboard widgets always float above everything and won't go into the background.) Yahoo support has been stalling for three months. Today they suggested updating the Widget Engine to version 4.5.2, which, unfortunately, doesn't exist.

Is a version planned for OS X 10.5?

The last few updates seem to have fixed most of the major problems I mentioned in my review of version 4.0. YWE will periodically crash (widgets are still running, but the menu item + dock are gone), but I haven't experienced contextual menu or problems with Yahoo's own widgets crashing in awhile. The design quibbles with 4.x that I described previously are still there, though. I don't expect them to change in a minor point release, so hopefully version 5.x will address some of those.

I find it telling that neither MacUpdate nor VersionTracker has a review that goes beyond version 4.0.3. It sounds like abandonware on the part of the users. It also sounds as if the Yahoo folks haven't listened to a word of feedback about their product; none of the updates appears to address any of the issues I've seen cited here. I for one will not use this program, although Version 3 was very nice.

Version 4 has some great new features but has been almost nothing but bugs for me. The idea of a dock with mini-states is great, as is the idea of browsing/installing widgets entirely within YWE. My biggest problem with YWE 4 is that most of the widgets I've tried, including Yahoo's official set, either won't launch or will crash when I actually try to use them. On a similar note, widget-specific items will randomly stop showing up in the context menu, making it impossible, for instance, to change my location in Yahoo's weather widget. Clearing out all of my preferences and support files, then re-launching YWE doesn't help. There's also a few small but strange design choices in YWE 4 as well. The developers changed the drop-down menu for widget display modes to something that's less intuitive when you're trying to just show a widget in the Heads Up display. There are also some options that for some reason weren't included, most notably the ability to only show the dock in the Heads Up Display. It can either be completely closed or open with some portion showing at all times along one edge of the screen (including when it's collapsed). And this is more of a suggestion than a complaint, but it would be great if there was a way to minimize a widget to the dock so that only the mini-state was visible. Yahoo's weather widget, for instance, would display the current weather in the dock, but the extended forecast wouldn't be visible. I'm switching back to 3.x (which I'd give 4 stars) until they work out the bugs. 4.x has the potential to be a 5-star app, but the bugs and a few smaller design quirks that I and many others (see the official forums) have experienced hold it back.

Still no reason to use this over Dashboard. I thought the sidebar might be cool, but it has numerous implementation flaws like the rest of the app. I have to press fn-F7 for the global hotkey to work. Dashboard doesn't need the fn key. I can't drag widgets from the sidebar? Oh, I have to click them to load them. I set the sidebar to auto-hide, yet it still shows a sliver of it on-screen, wtf! How do I configure a widget? By right-clicking... and then messing with a clunky half-baked preferences window. No-where nearly as elegant as Dashboard. Still the same clunky interface, a long way to go in my book. And they're already at version 4?

Works ok on my iMac under 10.3.9 but the calendar widget now only pulls in my main iCal calendar and not all my subscribed to calendars too. So I feel lost. The previous calendar widget worked great. I've also had a few widgets crash. Sad.

Hey, at least it showed in your activity monitor. I can't even get it to do that much. Nothing shows up; nothing happens.

Installed 4.0x169. App launches, but the menu extra never appears. There is no evidence of the application other than the app in my activity monitor. Tried forcing quit and relaunching with the same results. Tried physically removing the app and reinstalling with the same results. Whatever...

Still no Intel-based Mac support!?! Come on! This is ridiculous. Really makes you appreciate what a difference in quality you get when a single, independant developer works on your software compared to when a big corporation takes over. Booooo!

Runs great on my old G4 goose neck iMac running OS 10.3.9 I use Dashboard on my G5 iMac, but I think I still like Konfabulator/Yahoo Widget Engine more. I spread the widgets out across my desktop and their always there doing their thing and ready to go. P.S. "Hula Girl" for YWE kicks a--!!!

Not sure if I'm alone here... but more than half of my old widgets no longer work right with the "Yahoo" version of Konfabulator... plus, it pops a message to make me verify if I want to run 3rd party widgets... but won't let me approve or disapprove them... so i have to quit the app altogether. If I ever DO get a 3rd party widget running, they display incorrectly or not at all (though still suck up process). I've tried reinstalling, rebooting, etc. Having been a Konfabulator user & developer since day one, I must say I am quite disappointed since Yahoo took over. I hope this is not a sign of the kind of support for the Mac we can continue to expect since Yahoo's acquisition of this product.

yay the Yahoo! Widget Engine....

Excellent! Much improved!

As great as ever. But Yahoo, what WERE you thinking? What an incredibly stupid name. What would have been so bad about Yahoo Konfabulator? I agree that the name alone makes it sound like something utterly uninteresting, if not something to be avoided. In fact, if i hadn't noticed where it said "was konfabulator" i wouldn't have downloaded it at all. Really should have left the name alone, ya bozos.

Works great, just has a new, worse, name. I like Konfabulator much better.

I wish I could be excited about the new name. I guess it shows how much Yahoo!'s PR knows about making something sound about as lame, unexciting, and dorky as possible. Goodbye Konfabulator. Meet your new master.

It sounds like Jamie Genet has some severe system problems that have nothing to do with Konfabulator. I've been using multiple widgets almost since Konfabulator came out and have never experienced any of these problems. Currently on 10.4.3 and still works fine. For me Konfabulator is a better solution than Apple's knock-off, Dashboard. With the wide variety of widgets available I can select the ones that are most useful to me and keep them on the desktop. It'll be interesting to see what the changes are in the current version.

This is one severly buggy piece of software… Well, I thought I'd give Konfabulator another try now it's owned by Yahoo. Last time I tried it I was unimpressed with it's slow speed on my G3 iMacs, and the CPU meter, rather ironically, had a memory leak This time around bad things began happening from the word go. The Digital Clock widget refused to display, and if I tried accessing it's prefs from the Konfab menu I got a dialogue box saying no prefs were available. Worse - that dialogue refused to accept input - it would not close till I quit the Konfabulator app from it's menu. Then I tried seeing what the simple background pref looked like when I pressed F8. After setting that Konfabulator no longer responded to F8. Not until I quit and restarted it, and set it back to the default background would F8 show the Konfabulator screen. Then I tried accessing the PIM widget (which I _thought_ I'd seen pop up briefly the first time I ran Konfabulator after installing it). Nada - nothing. No preference access either. Not even a dialogue that wouldn't close. Nothing. Still, just in case I thought things couldn't get any worse I tried accessing iChat Bezel widget's prefs. Once again - nada, nothing, no response. I next tried setting the Weather widget to my closest town - Tauranga Harbour, New Zealand. Miracle of miracles it worked… until I later quit and restarted Konfabulator. Now it refuses to show my weather, yet Palo Alto and another city(that's NOT close to me) in NZ - Auckland - displays fine, weather wise. Lastly the CPU meter's LED style red numbers show nothing. But as there's ZERO useful documentation or info I have no clue what might usually display there, anyway. In short, Konfabulator used to work a year ago on this G3 iMac. Now it's so broken I'm put off trying any third party widgets. I can't believe there was so little testing done Oh, and maybe some user out there can help me with a query of mine (cause there's ZERO help provided with Konfabulator): with utterly useless broken widgets like PIM - how can I quit them? I know I can quit the non-functional Digital Clock with a control click of it's name in the gear menu, but that doesn't work with the useless PIM. As it doesn't display, and won't respond, how the heck can I quit the damn thing? Do I need to delete my prefs EVERY time I run into a poorly written and poorly tested widget? I suppose I could just delete it from my HD, but given how poorly Konfabulator is doing so far, I'm not sure I want to add to it's troubles. BTW - this absurd trial took place on a 500MHz G3 with 512MB RAM.

Works well in Tiger.

I don't know if this can compete with Dashboard. I just added a couple of widgets that I would use: (Thesaurus-Dictionary and a Wikipedia widget) that do not even work. I guess I will wait until I get Tiger to start using widgets

Very nice ap, but a few questions: how do you 'turn' some of them on and not others (if they all start up there's no room for anything else on the screen, once you've chosen a few more). And the preferences file for the entire program is nothing but a control key choice, hardly adequate for such a multi-faceted program. There needs to be a simple way to switch them on and off, other than removed the widgets from the folder permanently. Yahoo may not be used to the Mac standard where users can take control of a program completely, most of these things are intuitive for Mac programs.

This is what Dashboard has tried to emulate, with only moderate success. The beauty of Konfabulator is that, without any third-party assistance, it runs _on my desktop_! As nice as Dashboard is, having to leave my desktop and run a widget, or simply view one, means leaving my work space. Konfabulator is right there, while I work. No separate overlay. Terrific app!

Wow - A dashboard for panther users

Konfabulator 2.2.2 is great! The only problem I have is: how can inactivate an active a widget? Example: I activated the analog clock and then the digital clock. How can I get rid of the analog clock and keep just the digital clock working? And I have not beein able to create a widget because there is no manual and I don't understand what to do to create one. Can someone please help me? Felipe

Dashboard is dead, konfabulator is perfect: free, fast, stable, little memory consume, and more configurable than dashboard. Outstanding.

If you find the gears on the Konspose backdrop distracting, you can get rid of them by replacing Contents/Resources/BackdropGears.png with a fully transparent PNG.

Pretty freakin' neat. Looks and feels better than the Dashboard, and supported by top-notch developers to boot.

Version 2.1.1 as of 8/5: http://www.widgetgallery.com/dl_item.php?item=Konfabulator_2.1.1.dmg

Where this trounces Dashboard is in the straightforward fact that you do not have stop what you are doing, go to another screen, and check your Widget. This saves an immense amount time.

Great toy on Mac!

've tried it again and I hate it. Uses too much CPU, RAM. Apple's version is brighter and stable.

Now that it's free it's awesome. Love to have widgets on the desktop not in a separate window. Also works in 10.3 and 10.2!!!!

Wow more ways to sell me things. No thanks. The guy that mad konf complained apple had ripped him off. He has allowed Yahoo to rip him an new arse. lol.

Hmm, I think the "What's New" list is missing a little something. • BOUGHT BY YAHOO, NOW FREE, GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE WILL HOLD

I've downloaded Konfab a few times but never kept it installed for more than a few minutes. The usefulness/resource tradeoff just wasn't worth making. Dashboard is definitely overhyped, but I do use it. That really says it all.

K2.0.1 - Oh God this messes up sooo well! I can right click or command click on any widget. How can I kill a widget after it is running. Lots of problems in 10.2.8. I wonder if I have an old install pre 2?

this product will die. face it. killed by dashboard. and it is ok. at the pace of new widgets coming dashboard will make konfabulator be forgotten very soon. and especially at older machines konfabulator was never really an option.

Konfabulator is original and great. I will always use Konfabulator. Great new Widgets! Dashboard???

Konfab's Weather widget works where I am (north Thailand) and every other world city I enter, and also keeps a list of them in the widget. This wipes the floor with the Apple derivative which doesn't do this for me. Imo it's also better to have widgets default to the desktop. Have to agree they're going to have a hard time getting $25 now, but also have to say I paid a while back and have no regrets, then or now. This version is a real improvement too. I hope they keep it up on the Mac.

The release notes show some really nice new stuff, the developers are very innovative and talented and I wish them every success in their Windows support. It is a great shame that some Mac users have decided to turn their back on basic right and wrong and actually offer some rather negative comments about Konfabulator; clinging onto FUD created by a 1 or 2 websites in defence of strikingly similar products. At the end of the day I guess that is a real defect in human nature, but the truth is very clear to me at least; there is absolutely no doubt in my mind at all (having read all the arguments about history, Desk Accessories and similar things) that other strikingly similar products would simply not exist and if not for Konfabulator. And actually if nothing else that is a huge compliment and I really hope the Konfabulator devs enjoy big success on the vast Windows platform for their work and innovative ideas.

Well, Dashboard maybe far from perfect, but I'll use dashboard, cause it's free. Besides, my daily job required me to open bunches of windows all over the desktop. I'll have one Finder window, two PDF documents, three Terminal, and four BBEdit. I don't need extra floating windows that constantly provide informations I can not handle. I like to press a hot-key to bring them up, and press hot-key to go back to my regular works. Yes, Konfabulator can do that too. But why pay extra fee when Dashboard can do the same thing ?

Konfabulator is ok I guess, but from what I've seen most all Dashboard widgets are more useful/functional than Konfabulator widgets. I've also found Dashboard widgets are easier to create. The price is a little too much IMO, considering that Dashboard is free and more or less a Konfabulator equivalent. $10 sounds much more reasonable. The type of app I would pay $25 for is something like Transmit - an extremely useful utility, not just GUI pretties - Long story short, I'll be using Dashboard.

Konfabulator is well passed it's time. I'm sure Windows users will enjoy the Gee-whiz factor of all the beautiful widgets, but will find the same problem that has been inherent to Konfabulator: few of the widgets are actually useful. The inherent limitations of Konfabulator are apparent when you see the sheer number of similiar widgets, and the dearth of ones which are actually useful. This is where Dashboard shines: the flexiblity of combining XML, HTML, CSS2, DOM2, JS, HTML, Flash, QuickTime, and Java; all powered natively from within the OS using WebCore which significantly reduces overhead compared to Konfabulator. This also gives developers so much more flexibility and abilities to make widgets that are actually - dare I say it: useful? Sorry Konfaboys, you are on the way out.

Dashboard kicks Konfabulator's @$$!!! It is system integrated, and costs no more! Why does anyone on the Mac still use this app? If you haven't already,get Tiger! It's worth it!

Here's a list of things we added in 2.0. Full release notes for additions are posted on our site. What's New in 2.0 For End Users - Multi-Pane Preferences dialogs for Widgets - New Widgets: PIM Overview (looks at iCal/Outlook data) and Memory Gauge. - Improved Proxy support for web resources (AutoProxy) - Analog Clock: updated look, new colorization features, second hand. - Battery: updated look, removed multi-battery support. - Calendar: new colorization features, double-click day to see info in PIM Overview for that day. - Digital Clock: revised graphics and new alarm manager... very cool. - Picture Frame: updated look and new frame choices. - The Weather has brand new look and new feed from Accuweather - Where Is It: package tracking added. - WiFi signal: revised look. What's New in 2.0 For Widget Authors - COM support - Inter-Widget messaging - Image Tiling/Scaling - ClipRects on Images - vAlign on images and text areas - Colorization (colorize, hsl adjustment, hsl tinting) - Context menu addition support - filesystem.read/writeFile (utf-8 only) - filesystem.volumes - array of currently mounted volumes - filesystem.move/copy - filesystem.getFileInfo - filesystem.getDisplayName - chooseFile/chooseFolder dialog functions - saveAs dialog function - chooseColor dialog function - Trash/Recycle Bin open/empty - Multiple Window support - Multi-Click handling - New Timer object Beyond this there are a TON of fixes in this release.

What is new in this version? I registered version 1.x, so if I install version 2.0 will I need to purchase an upgrade license? Konfabulator's website ONLY offers download link... No info AT ALL. This is crazy.

Though Dashboard is impressive in many respects, it is sad to see people kick Konfabulator just because Apple did. The new & updated Konfabulator widgets feature a level of user-customization that is currently lacking in Dashboard widgets... and will help set the stage for Konfabulator widget developers to begin to offer similar advantages to their users. Dashboard widgets currently suffer from the same flaws that early Kon widgets did... lack of consistency & huge size. Though Dashboard is an impressive technology, it does not seem to have learned from Konfabulator's early mistakes. Though Amnesty can allow you to run dashboard widgets on your desktop, at this point, who would want to run the current Dashboard widgets all the time? On the other hand, Konfabulator features quite a few widgets that run well in the background on the desktop without distraction, excessive CPU usage, and easy reach of the eyes. It also seems strange to me the decreased usefulness of some things being put in Dashboard... like the itunes widget. Why would i want to go to the Dashboard to change my itunes track or see it's info when I can do this onscreen already? Though the widget they created is very attractive, it is less than useful inside the Dashboard because invoking it requires an extra step. Konfabulator users can choose whether their items exist in an envoked screen or constantly onscreen, helping to eliminate such user-interaction problems. The truth of the matter is, Dashboard is wonderful... but it and it's widgets have a lot of growing up to do before they truly offer a "replacement" for Konfabulator.

This is great, I am happy to be using Konfabulator again, I like to see the certain widgets at all times, I am a little tired of all the tricks that you have to do on dashboard for widgets to remain on the screen. Good job guys keep up the pressure on Apple by creating a better product!

I wonder if ther is any way to make the widgets for this program to work with Dashboard.

Konfabulator widgets no longer use much cpu since version 1.2 . This is based on very outdated experience. As an example: K. plus four widgets use not more than 1.3% cpu in total. That's roughly the same in Dashboard with similar widgets. Memory footprint is also in the same ballpark. As for Konfabulator 2.0, hey check it out! It is updated for Tiger and comes with more polished visuals.

R.I.P. Konfabulator Hello Dashboard!!!!!!!

This product was dead in the water as soon as the developer decided (understandably so) to make a Windows variant. Don't waste your time if you're using Tiger. If you're not, make sure you've got the system resources for it.

Konfabulator widgets really don't function in the same way as those in Dashboard. Some widget functionalitiy makes more sense as a Dashboard widget and some makes more sense in Konfabulator. Far from being supplanted by Dashboard, I think Konfabulator has a bright future and the new features of 2.0 seem to be a nice improvement. We will have to wait for some of the widget developers to update their work to take advantage of 2.0, but I for one am going to purchase a 2.0 license for my "other" computer, a Windows XP machine, so I can have my widgets at work as well as at home.

Well done eye candy. It is a nice piece of software. It seems satble and don't use too much RAM or CPU. However widgets are generally bloated.

Waitng for Godot...I mean, Tiger.

Will wait for Tiger now…

Wait for Tiger!

I feel that Dashboard and Konfabulator are 2 different features of application. Both of them are using small application so call "widget", but functionality wise is different. For those who wish to have the small application to be appear all the while so that they can view and use it all the time, Konfabulator is the choice. Some people like to see the weather report at the same time edit word document, go for Konfabulator. But for people who wish to keep his place clear and fast access to small application when they needed, Dashboard got the features. That's why I did review that Konfabulator still have their market share since Dashboard provide different access features of program. Thus I think that if we keep on targeting on the term "widget" and compare each other, is useless or rather nonsense. Just like argue about engine in 2 different transports; Truck and Motorbike. Make sense? So Konfabulator developer, keep it up.

Frankly speaking, still prefer the basic concept of Dashboard, Appear when needed, Disappear when you don't. But Konfabulator is beautiful, unfortunately, just don't feel like needed. What would Konfabulator developer do if MS add in similar feature package into their new release; Longhorn? By schedule, they still have one year + to go, I believe they are able to add in if they wish. HHmmmm..... Linux will be a good target. Think about that and prepare for it.

I have enjoyed Konfab since it's initial release... and now it's even better with the Exposé (aka Konsposé) feature... I can see my currently playing track on one corner of my desktop... and the online status of all my client websites subtlety displayed on another... and i hit my Function key i assigned next to my Exposé hotkeys.. and voila... I now see my local weather forecast and Weather Channel radar, my stocks, my to-do list.. all kinds of helpful little items. Back when Mt. St. Helen's was acting up, I had the webcam there in a little window in Konsposé, so I sometimes would see the steam and smoke clouds rising from the crater before the news channels caught wind of it. I don't know the future of Konfabulator when Tiger arrives... Apple unfortunately seemed to have had every legal right to do what they did, but I admit I got a heavy queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I first caught sight of Dashboard and all its Widgets. My second thought on seeing Dashboard was "nice," but my first response was "they didn't..." Sure, Apple was behind the Desk Accessories back in the day... but I credit Arlo and the Konfab team for being the first to bring that idea back with such style and usability. Viva K.

I see your point about indicating there is competition. I'll amend my previous comment to say that posters can point to competitors, but to comment about relative value (instead of writing about differences in features) is as misleading as it is personal. It is possible to be poor and have enough character not to whine. I stand by my first comment: complaining about price is irrelevant. Irrelevant means that it is not relevant, not that it lacks class. As I pointed out before, value is different for different people, since features which are useless to some are valuable to others. Moreover, these products are shareware and people have a chance to decide its value for themselves. I did not say that I had any disposable income or that I could afford it. I probably have less money than many of the whiners; I can't imagine that I have any more. Logically, by saying "Someone who does not like whining about price is someone who has disposable income." you are saying: "Someone who does not have disposable income likes whining about price." That is "Poor people like whining about price." Do you really mean that? I repeat: It is possible to be poor and have enough character not to whine.

Dude, you're gonna get a Dell.

What a fuss for nothing. Useless, expensive and CPU hog...

Get Statto, or wait for Dashboard in Tiger. Konfabulator is too expensive, and gives you the FLOATING WINDOW OF PURE ANNOYANCE when you don't pay for it...

Get Stattoo, or wait till 10.4