Anybody using KONFABULATOR? NOW FREE! Read Post #19 (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

What is Konfabulator?

This month's MaximumPC magazine
has an in-depth look at this new program
that puts customized information "widgets"
all over your desktop.

The website is right here

This thing looks incredible -- and, from
what has been reported, you can run loads
of these things all over your desktop at
once and it uses a tiny fraction of your
CPU and memory.

Go to the gallery and look at the dozens
of small applications you can place on your
desktop -- from utilities to games to app
extensions.

I'm going to start playing around with this
later today and most likely will register it
by week's end.

Just wondering if anyone else has been using
this and what they think.

...of course, I highly expect this thread to
produce many curiosity seekers like myself to
try it out as well.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Thanks for the heads up Ron. I think I may add this to my ThinkPad.

It is also worthwhile to note that many of these types of widgets will soon be Apple's Mac OS X Tiger system. Anyone on that format can see them in action in Steve Job's 2 hour keynote address at MacWorld on Apple's site.

Update: Wow. Looks like Konfabulator has it for the Mac as well.

 

[Joseph S]

It's from the same guy that wrote the Aaron extension and Kaleidoscope theme cp/extensions for OS 8 and 9. Around that time he did this on the side while working for Apple. Konfabulator was Mac only until OS X Tiger was demoed last year containing "Dashboard" which does the same thing as Konfabulator integrated into the system. He threw a fit and released it for PC as "protest."

 

[SteveLa]

Dashboard

 

[Darryl]

Look a lot like DesktopX (www.desktopx.net, which has about 1800 different objects, widgets, and themes available (www.wincustomize.com). It's very cool. You can even build and script your own behavior.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Darryl,

At a quick glance, can you see which
program might be better?

I quickly looked at the DesktopX widgets
and they didn't seem to be as good as the
Konfabulator ones.

On the other hand, you may have more
experience with DesktopX, and thus, a
better opinion on all of this.

Thanks

 

[Dave Gilbert]

I use Konfabulator for Windows, and I love it.

I currently have widgets which show me the weather at home and at work (1.5 hr drive from each other, so the weather does vary ), a calendar, a picture frame that refreshes every 15 minutes, and a GMail notifier. There are tons available, and most are cross-platform.

 

[Travis Olson]

Nice little program.

 

[Darryl]

I've never used Konfabulator, so I can't really compare. They just came out with a new version of DesktopX which I haven't tried, so I'm not an authority there either. But version 2 is very cool. Here are some features that I appreciate; I don't know how they compare to Konfabulator at all:

• You can create your own objects. You have total control over how they look and behave.
• You can use COM objects and ActiveX controls natively. As you script your objects' behavior and appearance, that gives you a ton of flexibility while allowing you to leverage existing capability. Embedding a web browser as part of your wallpaper is cake. Coding a widget which reads and displays appointments from my outlook calendar is effortless.
• There are several full "desktops" available (collections of objects, widgets, and wallpaper, changing the whole look and feel of the UI, like WindowBlinds gone extreme)

Another thing that some people might like about DesktopX is that there is a $15 "client" version, which lets you use other people's objects and widgets but doesn't let you create your own. I like DesktopX precisely because I CAN code my own, with very few limits, but if that's not your thing there's a cheap version just for you.

Konfabulator might be better than DesktopX. I really have no idea. I'm gonna check it out. Thanks for the link Ronald.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I think DesktopX and Konfabulator really target different goals.

I'm pretty comfortable around computers (work as a sysadmin as well as being a hobbyist) and I found DesktopX to be too fussy and required far too much energy to configure and use. It was fun to turn it on, give it a quick spin, say "Pretty cool stuff. Ah well." and then delete it and go back to the "real world".

At the moment all I use to customize my look and feel is StyleXP, so I have a nice Mac OS X feel to my Win XP system.

I found Konfabulator to fall into the same category as DesktopX in one respect - it was pretty and clever and added absolutely no usability for me personally. The widgets don't match anything else on my computer and just stick out as oddities when it comes to looks. It was very easy to use though.

Perhaps most people aren't as interested in having a unified look on the desktop as I am.

 

[Jon_Are]

Konfabulator looks great, but I have one question before I download:

How easy is it to uninstall if I decide I don't want it?

Thanks,

Jon

 

[Mark Dubbelboer]

This thing is very very cool.

 

[chelentano]

my.yahoo.com personalized page does kind of the same thing. I just click Home button on my browser and I see my.yahoo.com page - scrollable list of:
- email preview
- notepad
- calendar
- briefcase
- stock portfolio
- weather in selected cities
- news: business, international, sports, technology etc.
- air ticket deals
- TV guide
- sports score
- bookmarks
- map quest
- and much more... it's very customisable

All of that I can access with single password from any connected computer in the world, including my Palm phone Treo 650.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

Konfabulator has been out for at least a year on MacOS X. Its so successful that Apple actually ripped this guy off and incorporated it into OS X 10.4. They did the same thing to the Watson developer. No compensation just blatant reverse engineering.

 

[Joseph S]

Then he sold out to Sun and created a dead end product. :frowning:

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Reverse engineering is legal in the U.S. They do that to improve creativity but it can be abused.

I would buy Konfabulator but since I get the same widgets in Tiger I will just pay my $129 for that and get a new OS upgrade to boot.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

I'll be buying Tiger as well.

And I'm not saying what Apple does is illegal. Just slimy. Why not "buy" the product ... use some of the 6 billion they have in the bank. I'm sure either developer would have taken a paltry sum.

 

[Chad A Wright]

I was also interesting in Konfabulator, but I didn't ever hear about it until I saw the first showing of Tiger. We are close enough to the release of Tiger now that I think I'll just wait.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I enjoyed the free trial but didn't want to buy the program. I am glad I passed!
Yahoo has purchased Pixoria, the creators of Konfabulator, and made it a free program:
http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Nice!

For those that recently purchased the program:

Perhaps a mod can change the title of the thread to indicate that the program is now free.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Your wish is my command.

Thanks for the update. I have a
$20 refund coming.