I can honestly say that my hands are shaking from excitement, as the iPhone is slowly moving into the direction of widgets (at least the jailbroken iPhones are). Android users have long been enjoying them, and now iPhone users are FINALLY starting to hop on board the widget wagon as well.
If you’re not aware of what this beautiful word means, Dictionary.com defines it thusly: “an element of a graphical user interface such as a button or scroll bar; also, a module of software for a personalized Web page.”
Here’s a glimpse of what this could look like on your actual handset.
What you are looking at is a picture of my iPhone with a weather widget that gives me the date, time and current weather — immediately on my homescreen, without having to open an application.
That’s not to say this is perfect. The developer incorporated this inside a Winterboard theme that matches up the time and date, but it doesn’t allow for location to be set. (This is giving me weather for Tashkent, and I can’t change that.)
I do think this bodes well for the future though. It’s a good start, and I hope to see this theme get developed into a fully functioning widget soon. I’d love to get my up-to-date weather on the fly.
For now, if you are interested in grabbing this, just perform a quick search for “WeatherFurik” in Cydia. After it is downloaded, just pop into Winterboard, put the WeatherFurik theme on top and select it.
Is this the beginning of widgets for the iPhone? Could more, fully functional ones be far behind? I’m incredibly enthusiastic by this possibility.
This was one thing that could’ve made me defect to an Android handset, and now it’s on the brink of arriving on the iPhone. If you’re as excited about this as I am, let me know in the comments.
This article is presented for informational purposes only. Jailbreaking can void Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch warranty. Any efforts or attempts at jailbreaking is done at the sole discretion of the user. Today’s iPhone assumes no liability or responsibility for any resulting user actions, software or hardware glitches or revocation of warranties. Proceed at your own risk.
