Kapsules
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Kapsules is a freeware desktop widget engine for Windows. It makes use of the Windows Scripting Technology, allowing widget designers to use any scripting language that has an ActiveScript engine. Those widgets are then made available in the widget forge on Kapsules' website. As of December 2005, widgets are available in eight different scripting languages. Kapsules is reliant on the .NET Framework. All versions of Kapsules before and including version 0.9.9.0 have used version 1.1 of the .NET Framework, where all later versions of Kapsules use version 2.0 of the .NET Framework.
As mentioned above, widgets can be written in any language for which there is an ActiveScript engine. Kapsules also supports .NET scripting languages. This flexibility lets widget designers review the positive and negative aspects of a particular scripting language, then choose a language based on the widget's desired functions. Widgets have been written in Python, PHP, JScript, JScript.NET, VBScript, VB.NET, Ruby and Perl.
Kapsules was inspired by Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke's Konfabulator (Which has recently been purchased by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Widgets). Both are widget engines with very similar functionality. Konfabulator was originally written for Mac OS X and later ported to the Windows environment, while Kapsules was designed to use integral components of Windows. Where Kapsules lets designers choose from one of several scripting languages, Konfabulator widgets are written exclusively in JavaScript.
One lesser known, but noteworthy, difference between them is that Yahoo! Widgets requires Administrator privileges to install in Windows. However, Kapsules can be installed even in a guest account.
[edit] Kapsules authors
Andrew Powell
