Introducing TypePad Widgets
Six Apart has introduced TypePad Widgets to its hosted weblog services. In programming parlance a widget is a graphical component often used to build a user interface. Six Apart has extended this idea into the create of blog page layouts, particularly in the area of sidebars. In the announcement on the company's Everything TypePad weblog Michael Sippey explains:
It could be a list of your most recent photos, or a topic-oriented search box, or a stats counter, or ads that help you make money, or a badge to help your users subscribe to your feed, or even a Flash game or a chat window. We call it "bling for your blog."
One disappointing aspect of this launch is that widgets can't be used with advanced (custom) templates. I'm not sure why. I can't think of a good one and the company does not explain in the announcement.
I really think there is something to the widget concept that I needs to be explored further. With syndication feeds, web services and mashups becoming more common and weblogging spreading far beyond the technically inclined this makes a lot of sense. This notion of widgets become even more interesting when the can be rapidly mixed and interact with each other.
I am curious about how this implementation will succeed in terms of user experience though. From my brief review widgets are implemented using JavaScript to circumvent installing code that run on the server -- a luxury MT users have that TypePad do not. With any significant amount of content being loaded and rendered using JavaScript is there a noticeable delay or flicker when loading a blog? I know there is a higher tolerance for this with the explosion of AJAX functionality that I'm not sure it matters that much, but its worth noting that there is likely to be some limitations to this approach or perhaps its just optimization that time and experience will provide.
