Lest we forget…
Publication stopped on this blog a (too long) while ago, without further ado. In the same manner, it’s back again!
Well, ado there needs to be: let it be known, good people and dearest subscribers, that my time away from the blog has not been in vain, only that I was diverted by other projects which needed my full attention. Even better, the latest of these time-consuming project has even been recently launched: French users of Netvibes can now profit (literally!) from a fully-featured Cashback widget – in the conception of which I had a not-too-small part 
Anyway, the Netvibes DevNet blog is now back on tracks, and to make up for the lost time, here are a couple not-so-random facts that popped on our screens during the hiatus, and that we thought you might be interested in. In fact, far from being random, they are both tied to UWA one way or another. Neato!
UWA widget for WordPress!
Now that the major components of UWA have been released as open-source on Netvibes.org (as well as the UWA specification), it was just a matter of time before some talented coder got hold of them to add UWA-capability to a project. Turns out the talent came from none other than François Hodierne, a former member of the Netvibes team and the man behind the h6e moniker!
The UWA Widgets plugin, which hecreated and released back in January, is a WordPress plugin which lets you add UWA widgets on your WordPress dashboard. Simple as that.
What that means is that you can improve the overly dull defaults blocks of WordPress’ dashboard, by mixingsome fun or useful widgets in.
Installing a widget is very easy, once you have a UWA widget’s source URL. The plugin adds a ‘Manage Widget’ section in the ‘Settings’ menu. Click it, and a quick interface reveals itself: a list of the installed widgets (with a remove button in case you need it), and simple form to add new widget.
Copy-paste the new widget’s source URL in that form, validate, and from now on the dashboard will display it along with the other components. You can edit the widget just as you would on Netvibes or the Apple Dashboard: by clicking the ‘Configure’ button that appears at the top-right of the block…
The WordPress dashboard with the Twitter, i-Metro and Gaping Void UWA widgets
You can get this nifty plugin from the WordPress.org Extend section, or directly from WordPress’ internal plugins installer (if you use WP 2.7+).
Note: the UWA technology relies on the Zend Framework. Hence, François have created a separate Zend Framework plugin for WordPress, which you should install and activate before activating the UWA Widgets plugin.
UWA cheat-sheet in Russian!
Our friends at Rambler.ru, who’s own personnalized startpage uses the Netvibes technology, have been kind enough to make a russian translation of the UWA cheat-sheet, and share it with us. You download it here, as with the English and French version!
If you happen to be interested in translating the cheat-sheet into your own language, don’t hesitate to contact us!
netvibes