I have always been a big fan of Rapid Application Development (RAD). Wikipedia defines RAD as:

…the term and its acronym have come to be used in a broader, generic sense that encompasses a variety of techniques aimed at speeding application development, such as the use of web application frameworks and other types of software frameworks.

In the past, the key to a lot of rapid application development has been the use of software frameworks or toolkits. Unfortunately these types of frameworks are sadly missing when it comes to widget development.

Recent entrants in the space have failed to deliver compelling widget RAD solutions for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, most of them (such as WidgetBox and ClearSpring) are marketplaces or distribution plays and have no real intention at being or becoming a toolkit! Although both WidgetBox and ClearSpring have things such as “Facebook App Generators” or accelerators, these simply try and stuff existing Flash-based widgets into new social networking platforms and are not toolkits per se. Others like KickApps see themselves as hosted, white-label platforms! The closest thing to a widget toolkit is probably Sprout Builder, but its feature set has limitations, some find that its “development” environment is complex, and users have no control over the memory footprint or branding.

In general, here are some problems with many of today widget toolkits:

  • Branding: Most toolkits (as well as “wrappers” from WidgetBox, ClearSpring and Sprout) have mandatory branding (that promotes their service) which cannot be removed.
  • Size: Even if you can live with someone else’s branding, anything that is “general purpose” tends to be very large, and on the Internet size matters! I remember a recent client that tried to build a widget using one of the toolkits only to find that they had created a 500KB monster. We were able to recreate the same widget in 50KB!
  • Cost: But wait a minute, you say, these toolkits are FREE! Unless you don’t put any value on your own time, then yes, is all free. Unfortunately the client I mentioned above had invested over 20 hours in the exercise, only to find out it didn’t meet their needs, and this does not take into account potential future support cost!
  • Integration: None of the toolkits that I know of support any deep integration (other than an simple RSS feed) with client or third-party API’s.
  • Tracking: Although a growing number of “toolkit” provider are starting to provide some support for traffic reports and analytics, this support is limited and cannot be customized or integrated with a customers existing reporting system.
  • Support: Actually, the lack thereof. As you can imagine, most “free” toolkits do not come with support.

So what’s the alternative? At Metablocks, we build custom widgets to exacting brand, size and platform requirements. We have our own “internal toolkits” that speed up the process when it comes to things like XML communication, tracking and user interaction, but these are small and agile software frameworks that bring no extra “weight” (or wait) to the project. Obviously many of the things we do, cannot be duplicated with a general purpose toolkit. Thing like two-way communication (even within social networks), custom tracking and reporting, advanced video and audio support to name just a few. In addition, if something goes wrong, there is always someone there to fix it. If you have tried a general purpose toolkit and are less than pleased with the results, please give us a call!

Once you have a custom widget that works, THEN you can a marketplace like WidgetBox to distribute it. Remember that most of these companies (like WidgetBox and ClearSpring) are trying to solve a distribution problem, not a development or design problem!

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