I can think of many strange applications with no particular use other than simply to amuse you with their pointlessness. Konfabulator is not one of those applications, unless you want it to be. It is a very popular item these days, a shareware application that does many things. Konfabulator is an application based on widgets. This means that it doesn't actually do any one thing, it is essentially a plug-in based application.

Konfabulator is a shareware application that has become wildly popular recently. Now that it has been out for a while, I find it necessary to examine such a unique program. Konfabulator itself does nothing, it is essentially and application that allows plug-ins known as widgets to run. It comes with some widgets, but for the most part you download the ones you want from the Konfabulator website. There are very few included and they are very simple, a good introduction to the world of widgets. There are a variety of weather widgets, some battery monitors for laptops, airport signal indicators, and tons of clocks. Many widgets interface with your system and display information that your computer might do anyway, just in a more colorful way. The airport signal and battery charge widgets are a good example of this. However, these widgets are just the tip of the iceberg.

All the truly interesting and strange widgets come from the Konfabulator website (www.konfabulator.com) where there are over 300 widgets available for download. Here you will find widgets that can actually be very helpful, or very useless. Many of these widgets use your running internet connection to download data. For example, there are a variety of widgets that will show you the weather forecast for the next week, updated regularly. There are sports trackers, advanced search engines, news tickers, download trackers etc. It really helps to have broadband so you're always connected. Although there are many non-internet widgets, like iTunes favorites, games and iTunes remotes, the real fun is the widgets that need and internet connection. Thus, dial-up users might find Konfabulator not quite so cool. I can't actually describe the number of widgets and uses that they have. However, once you look through the list of widgets you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.

So how does Konfabulator actually work? Konfabulator runs in the background, meaning it doesn't actually show up in the dock. It starts up and the widgets appear and run on the desktop. They can be moved and are essentially finder windows. The widgets work on XML, this is the programming language with which they are created and how they connect to the internet. Because they are based on this standard, it is relatively simple to create a widget of your own. This is where all the widgets come from. If you have faith in your programming ability, or you have the perfect widget idea they you can create a widget. There are tutorials on the Konfabulator website about how to create widgets. The initial learning curve is a little high, but once you've made one widget you've pretty much got it down.

At first Konfabulator was unimpressive, I didn't really feel the need to have a to-do list, or a weather forecast on my desktop. However, as Konfabulator became more popular many more widgets appeared. Soon I found widgets I can't live without, and you will to. Join the world of widgets, the world of possibilities, the program that is everything and nothing, Konfabulator.