Widgetbox v1.1 Released

Widgetbox released version 1.1 tonight.

This release focuses on the usability of the catalog (browsing and trying out widgets) and is more friendly to people who want to link into Widgetbox.

The following features are new:

• New UI for browsing and trying out widgets. Browsing for widgets should be a more fun and faster experience. Bloggers now see a single page that shows them all information about a widget, lets them try it out, and shows them other widgets they might be interested in. The UI geek term for the philosophy behind the UI is "ambient findability": we try to guess what information the user is likely to be interested in and pre-fetch it onto the page instead of making them click for it.


• Configure a widget from an external website. Many developers have a configuration form for their widget on their own website. Developers can now let bloggers configure the widget on their site and pass the configured widget to Widgetbox. More info.


• "Get This Widget" chiclets. Each widget now has a "Get This Widget" chiclet underneath it. This can be turned off on the widget's panel's editor.


• Chiclets for bloggers. The widget's gallery page has a simple UI for a blogger to get a link or chiclet to the widget.


• IE7 support. A lot of work to make sure the site and widgets look and work well under Internet Explorer 7.0.


• The rating star formula has changed. We use a five-star rating system that displays in half-star increments. It used to be that a 4.9999 average rating was displayed as 4.5 stars. In practice that meant almost nobody ever got 5 stars. We now use math rounding, meaning that anything 4.75 and above displays as 5 stars.


• Many small things. Many small usability and performance tweaks, as well as preparing the database for our next release. (Stay tuned for more details.)

Enjoy!