Yahoo Purchases Konfabulator

NerdyPunk2ML writes "Macworld news has an article about Yahoo's acquisition of Konfabulator, which will be announced Monday. Yahoo company executives said they will be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the US$19.95 currently charged for the product. The reason they purchased Konfabulator was they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo web site." From the article: "The acquisition of Konfabulator may not be the last Mac compatible product users see from Yahoo! While Schneider wasn't specific, he did say that there was interest in the Mac. 'There is a move at Yahoo! -- in addition to Konfabulator -- to move more onto the Mac,' said Schneider. 'We want to make sure we find a way to be more cross platform.'"

Re:New Package, Same Old

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't these already available as an extra cost upgrade for Firefox?

Extra cost? Idiot. Firefox doesn't cost anything in the first place, unless you're kind enough to order a cd. And no, these have nothing to do with Firefox.

This post's chaptcha: haggle [slashdot.org]

Konfabulator ??

[Jeet81]

Took me some time to figure out what Konfabulator actually is.

After fiddling around with the website I found this:
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to.

Hope that helps someone.

Re:Too bad

[rebug]

Well... [mesadynamics.com]

Re:I just bought Konfabulator

[FuzzzyLogik]

if you read the damn article you'd notice they were giving refunds to people who bought it in the past 2 months. reading is fundamental and i don't think half the fucking population can do it anymore.

Re:Konfabulator ??

[fodi]

You spent 10 minutes and failed? you need help. I typed "Konfabulator" into Google and took the first link, which came up with the quote in the parent post....

Re:too lazy to google right now

[johnbeat]

>would Dashboard have existed in the form it does, using the
>underlying technologies it does, trying to serve the purpose it
>does and look how it does if Konfabulator never had existed ?

Meanwhile, other posters are complaining that Dashboard *doesn't* copy Konfabulator and requires (barring developer mode) looking at all of them at once.

Yes, Dashboard would have existed without Konfabulator. Dashboard is based on WebKit. WebKit is part of OS X. WebKit is what powers Safari and Mail's HTML rendering (and probably most other third-party HTML renderers at this point).

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/ [opendarwin.org]

Dashboard came at the same time that Automator did; Apple appears to be trying to ensure that their technologies are easy to automate and script into small, useful apps. After AppleScript, Automator, and the various scripting languages on the command line, it made perfect sense to build a javascript/HTML development tool based on WebKit.

I suspect that the only thing that would have changed if Konfabulator did not exist is that Apple would not have called their widgets "gadgets" for a few days.

Jerry

Daring.

[Xenex]

Here it is [daringfireball.net].

I don't think you understand what FUD [wikipedia.org] means.

Re:Konfabulator ??

[aarku]

True, but most /. summaries don't explain what they are talking about. Take the previous story about FreeBSD for an example. Then it just comes down to a point of view about what the vast majority of readers already know about. So, that's just like, your opinion, man.

A Better News Article on Konfabulator Sale

[Sundroid]

Here is a better article on the news: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Yahoo%20Konfabulator [nwsource.com]

It says Konfabulator has only three employees!!! Now we know which three households have champagnes popping tonight.

Re:How about a decent Yahoo Messanger! for Mac

[phalse phace]

Have you tried Adium [adiumx.com]? It's compatible with AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

...to place widgets on desktop:

[k2r]

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
killall Dock

Any widget you hold with the mouse while switching from dashboard to desktop will end up as a normal window.

And vice versa.

k2r

Or install the devMove widget.

Re:Incredibly annoying.

[Durf]

http://widgets.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]

Enjoy.

Re:Konfabulator ??

[ArcticCelt]

Well if you go on the web site the description is clear. First the tag line: "Whatever you want it to be"

Then : "Konfabulator, runner of widgets, this is what you need. Seriously."

It couldn't be more clear than that, how can you not understand?

Its a watchyamacallit for Smurfing Marclars!!!

//I did want to beat up the submitter too.

link to the yahoo site

[stuegg]

http://widgets.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]

long time coming...

[johnrpenner]

in the pre-OSX days, arlo was known by millions of macintosh
users for making 'Kaleidoscope' - it basically let users of
above-average graphic skill to theme the entire mac OS
interface down to the pixel without a lot of programming
knowledge. this was way ahead of anything that was done
in windows or linux. millions of mac users had custom UIs
because of this man.

but such a theme manager was closely tied with OS9,
and so when time came time for OSX, arlo started an even
more clever hack -- konfabulator.

now this was already very close to what apple always had with
desk accessories, but it was javascriptable (whereas DAs required
a separate development environment to compile); they were
internet enabled (desk accessories only lived in the time before
the internet); and they also had a really nice photoshop-able
front end (DAs couldn't utilize quickdraw as nicely as OSX's
incredible quartz graphics); and because CPUs were finally
fast enough, you could run them interpreted instead of
compiled.

these factors made konfabulator really nifty for quick, beautiful,
useful little utilities. but they fell too closely to apple's own revival
of the desk accessory concept, and so it looked like all of arlo's
hard work had all the chance of a netscape against a bundled browser.

so now yahoo buys them up, they all still got jobs, and it opens up
possiblities for them better than they ever had before -- this is a
good fate for these amazing mac developers. they have long been
a credit to the mac community. its great to see that they've come
across good fortune at this time. congratulations arlo & team!!
we love ya!
j.

Re:Oh well

[John Siracusa]

Of course after this announcement, it wasn't long before the Konfabulator guys copied the idea of (gasp!) not having the widgets hidden back there - what a concept!

First, Konfabulator widgets could always be layered along with other windows. They were never "stuck on the desktop" (although that is one of the layering options; layering settings are per-widget).

Second, Konfabulator planned what came to be called "Konsposé" long before anyone knew about Dashboard. It just so happened that Dashboard shipped first. When the Konfabulator "Heads Up Display" feature (as it had been known within the company since Konfabulator 1.0 was planned) finally shipped, the Konfabulator guys named their feature "Konsposé" as an homage to Mac OS X's Exposé feature.

(This information is straight from Arlo Rose, BTW...as opposed to the sensational speculation based solely on release dates and misinformation demonstrated in the post quoted above.)

Re:Cheap buy?

[Khuffie]

http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]

Enjoy :)

And the obligatory Linux version is...

[hacker]

For those asking the obligatory question: "But does it run on Linux?", the answer is "No, but..".

Linux (and BSD) have gDeskLets [gnomedesktop.org] which provides the exactly the same/similar functionality with arguably more applications available for it.

It is these two exact projects which spurned the creation of Apple's "Dashboard" product available in Tiger.

Re:Apple's implementation is better?

[Logic Bomb]

Um... Widgets are all launched by the Dock controller process, but if you open Activity Monitor or run Top you'll see that each open Widget has its own process. You can kill them individually.