Help Design the Macworld Widget Update
Well, as luck would have it, apparently even little rustic inns now have wifi access points, so I thought I'd post this quickie during my last evening in Ridgefield, CT.
After we launched WidgetMachine last year, our very first client for a custom Dashboard widget turned out to be Macworld thanks to the efforts of online content editor Jim Dalrymple who was very impressed with our website and products. You can read a bit about its development in this interview.
We're now in the process of updating the widget and I wanted to get some feedback from you guys on what you'd like to see with this. Now, ultimately, the Macworld staff will have final say on what features they want and do not want, and the initial version was affected pretty heavily by their requirements. But hearing the most common complaints and requests here as comments will help us gauge what's wanted. Below is Kenichi's initial mockup of a possible update, removing some extraneous weight from the widget and adding a scrollbar. (Click to see full size.):
Your feedback will be highly appreciated on this one! Current widget can be downloaded from here.
Comments
Up until this point, there have been 11 responses to “Help Design the Macworld Widget Update”:
Here are my recommendations:
1) Make the widget resizeable (if it isn't already)
2) Possbly offer a preview of the article once the user clicks on it
Otherwise it's looking very nice and clean.
- Resizable
- Hover mouse over article to get preview
As Louis and Glenn have both stated I would like to see the widget resizeable.
I kind of like the newspaper looking one. It's original and looks designed. The updated design looks nice, but it also looks like a cookie-cutter widget design. What if you kept the first one, got rid of the background paper, made the header smaller and kept the scroll bar and text updates? Is that to similar?
I like the MacWorld mouse in the background. It's a nice touch. I agree with Pat that you could use the extra header space to identify categories, maybe on hover or select.
I prefer the first version, add the scroll bar. make the color changeable.good work.
Thank you for your comments for my new mockup 
. I will see this post regularly!!
Phill Ryu
Thanks for all the feedback so far, and keep it coming!
If there is any spam/advertising like they have added to their RSS feed, your widget will get no traffic whatsoever. Make sure it only updates actual entries and doesn't inform users every four posts about the wonders of conference calling with a speakerphone.
Oh... the UI looks perfect. If the red bolded text is used for links, but not the black summary, I'd be in heaven.
I just feel as if the first one is exciting and original (even if it isn't). The second one, as someone else pointed out, is a cookie cutter widget, with the "glassy" header and footer.
That said, the new widget is very clean and probably easier to read, but I'd like to see something UI-friendly and daring. I don't have any real suggestions, so feel free to discard my post all together
Nate
Pat
July 21st, 2006 at 6:57pmI'd say, up the leading a bit. Also there is a lot of wasted header space, and a little wasted footer space. This could do good for a filter between news types. Then you could get rid of the red categories before each post.