Recently in Widgets Category

One of our whizz kids in the marketing department has knocked up a smart little bit of java which allows users to create their own landing pages in a flash!

(What are our dynamic landing pages?)

You can generate your own page by entering your keyword of choice in the box on the right and clicking on the Create your page button.

If you like the results you can then add the page to your favourites and visit it any time for the latest content on that subject.

Check out our Aircraft Profiles pages for the full list of landing pages ...

A new addition to the link furniture around our articles is the "Discuss this article on AirSpace" option below the main body of the article.

This has been a little while in development and more than a little tricky as it connects two different platforms is several ways.

Its function is to pass through an article headline to our discussion forums for further debate/comment.

If the "Discuss this article on AirSpace" link is followed a new thread is automatically authored in the relevant section of the AirSpace forums with a post featuring a quote from the article and a link back to it.

In addition, it also opens a new blank post below for the user's comment to go in. This functionality obviously requires a user to be registered on AirSpace and will prompt you for login/registration if necessary.

If you're a subsequent user to follow the "Discuss this article on AirSpace" link then the control/widget intelligently knows whether this has already done and so doesn't duplicate the thread. Instead it takes you to the current discussion, which you can reply to having read other users' thoughts.

The control will also display quick links (with time/date stamps) to the latest existing replies to the discussion if present.

One final feature on the control is a "Who is online?" function which shows recent/current visitors and members to the forums.

Seeing as widgets are set to be such an important topic for Flightglobal, thought it might be useful to pull together a list of various types of widgets and some further reading ...

Recommended widgets

http://widgets.yahoo.com/search/top-rated
http://mashable.com/2007/09/06/widgets-2/

News widgets

http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/live?category=4

http://widgets.yahoo.com/search/?q=news

Images widgets

http://bumped.org/WebApps/category/image-widgets/
http://flickrtools.blinklist.com/tag/flickr%20widgets/

Video widgets

http://newteevee.com/2007/10/16/top-five-video-widgets-to-fidget-with/

Apple widgets

http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/the-9-best-widgets/

Community widgets

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/363435/top-ten-facebook-widgets.html
http://www.boonex.com/products/ray/
http://www.rateitall.com/t-22486-community-widgets.aspx

Blog widgets

http://widgets-gadgets.com/2007/08/top-10-web-widgets-for-your-blog.html
http://technorati.com/widgets/blogwidgets

RSS widgets

http://widgets.yahoo.com/search/?q=RSS

Map widgets

http://www.visitwidget.com/feature.htm (good one for community build by nation)
http://bumped.org/WebApps/category/map-widgets/

Creating your own widget

http://www.yourminis.com/
http://grazr.com/config.html

Further widget reading:

Widget marketplaces (see WidgetBox, LabPixies and Wigipedia),

Widget blogs (see WidgetsLab and Widgetoko).

Widget conference (whole conference)

An integral part of the evolving Flightglobal is the introduction of widgets into the make up of our pages.

Widgets have their origins in blogs and other Web 2.0 services, but the use of them is becoming more widespread as sites recognise their potential and re-architecture to best accommodation their presence.

We’ve been making limited use of widgets for some time on our blogs – for example, the Woracle has a bunch of widgets in the right-hand column doing various things such as:

1) Navigation by date
2) A list of other relevant blogs (Blogroll),and
3) A graphical depiction of free-form tags (Tag Cloud)

We also make use of a Highest Rated Article widget displayed against Flightglobal articles.

However, we’re ramping up our use of widgets all over the site as they have some real benefits from an editor’s perspective.

1) They help keep pages really dynamic, updating in real time
2) They allow targeted content to be pulled together to form pages of rich, diverse content
3) They allow us to pull available third-party into Flightglobal pages, improving the user experience and the breadth of coverage

You can see a few examples of widgets starting to be used throughout the main area of the website. For example: on the Defence section home page we’ve got widgets on:

• Latest news
• Question of the week
• Related jobs
• Related blogs
• Latest posts from the DEW Line
• Eurofighter news
• Latest military discussion on AirSpace

We’ve plan to role this practice out to other section home pages very soon.

Additionally, Flightglobal is developing external-facing widgets.

By this I mean widgets for use by external parties on their sites.

This page showcases the kind of widget that other sites could use and tells you who to contact if you’re interested in having one on your site.