SVG communicating widgets

Abstract

There is widespread enthusiasm for widgets. While a widget is usually based on (a variant of) HTML+CSS+ECMA-Script, in the process of defining communicating widgets, we found it natural to design widgets and widget user agents in SVG+ECMA-Script. Our current interests include widgets for interactive TV, for user interface of UPnP devices, and for the mobile environment. Our work is based on the W3C Widgets specification, SVG Tiny 1.2, and our extensions for widget user agents and for communications. In this paper, we describe our extensions and the use of SVG for widgets suited for a mixed iTV, home-network and mobile environment.