The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the governing body that determines Internet standards, has a working draft proposing a specification for online widgets.
The proposal covers "small client-side applications for displaying and updating remote data, packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a client machine." The standard covers widgets that run on the desktop as well as in the browser.
The W3C says widgets include "clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters. It also notes that widgets go by many names, including "gadgets" or "modules".
While I can't say I understand all the technical in the spec, what I did find interesting was that it includes "widget autodiscovery." This spec, if approved, would allow Web browser to recognize when a site has an associated widget available. It's sounds very similar to RSS autodiscovery.
The W3C is calling for comments on the draft. This should be an interesting development to watch. As I understand it, right now Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple - the major proponents of widgets - all have their own formats. Widgets that work on one platform, don't work on the other. (Correct me if I have this wrong.) If the Widgets 1.0 standard is approved, it would alleviate a lot of headaches for developers. On the other hand, thousands of widgets might need to be re-written
