Netvibes Developers blog

Ben Colon is one of the first Netvibes modules developers – indeed, his Ecosystem ID is simply 1, you can’t get smaller than that Over the years, he has built a good number of MiniAPI modules. Since the deprecation of MiniAPI last July, he has started working on converting his MiniAPI modules into Universal Widget API widgets. We had to ask him how it was going, and he was kind enough to answer promptly.

How many MiniAPI modules did you build?

Since april 2005, I’ve developed around 30 modules using MiniAPI. Some modules, like Finance, TV Series, French TV Schedule and Calendar are among the most popular widgets from Netvibes Ecosystem.

Do you plan on converting them all to UWA?

For now, I plan to convert to UWA only modules which are used by at least 1000+ users, which makes for 50% of my modules. But If I have time, I’ll convert all.

What are the major benefit of switching to UWA?

There are many benefits to switching to UWA. On one hand, UWA is obviously better than MiniAPI: features, stability, documentation, community, … and on the other hand, UWA allows your widgets to be available outside Netvibes. I often receive emails from users who ask me to convert my modules to UWA because they would like to have them on their iPhone or other platforms.

What would prevent you from switching some of your modules to UWA?

Only Time! UWA is great, documentation is perfect, Netvibes team is brilliant and reactive – for me, only time could prevent me from switching my modules to UWA.

You’ve already switched a few. What are the main problems you’ve encountered thus far? How did you solve/circumvent them?

As soon as UWA launched, I’ve switched Mortgage Calculator module, mainly for testing it. Next I switched French TV Schedule module and I didn’t have any major issues. Some tutorials from the documentation explain pretty well how to convert MiniAPI module to UWA.

The only small issue was with Edit area. With MiniAPI module, this area was fully customizable, and I used it to add items or events to the module. With UWA, this area is strictly used to modules preferences, so I had to fit my mechanism directly into the body of the widget.

Another small matter is testing … With MiniAPI, I just tested modules on the four main browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera), but now with UWA and all its supported platforms, testing takes longer – but I don’t forget that the audience is bigger!

How do you feel about UWA globally?

I really like UWA. I think UWA is the best tool for developers who wish to develop widgets for a full set of platforms. I only regret the lack of tools around UWA – but stay tuned, I will talk about that later on my blog…

Thanks for the interview, Ben! Hope to see more switches from you soon

Tags: developer, interview, uwa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Articles, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.