Topic: Yahoo Widgets - Worth the resources???????

[Topper]

I'm using yahoo widgets for a lot of cool little tasks...calendar, dictionary, weather, resource manager, email notification and of course my favorite....my teflwatch RSS reader!  Very cool things...but at what cost?

The memory these things use is incredible!  Each widget averages about 8 meg in memory. The ones I use range from 13 mb to 3mb. 

On my computer, its not a problem but I can well imagine that it could be an issue for others....what do you think?

[wangsuda]

Most, if not all, widgets are not worth the resources IMO. Not only do they take up valuable memory and processor speed, they slow down download and upload speeds. Personally, I run without any widgets AND I turn off Java. I also run an adblocker through Firefox. The increased processor speed and internet  speed are worth it.

[Topper]

I've wondered about the up/download speeds....but I really can't tell if its the widgets (at times I've shut them down and it made no difference), my dear friends at True and their friends at TOT, sun spot activity, phase of the moon, etc...

Is there is bandwidth monitor you can install on your computer...one that monitors the bandwidth being used by various programs accessing the internet?   That would be a cool thing.

[wangsuda]

Yes there is, but I have no idea where to get one, sorry. Bandwidth tests are usually useless because the widgets are in standby mode when speed is measured.

[Topper]

I'm a programmer/db guy...maybe Nemesis could shed some light on bandwidth monitoring. 

[Topper]

Here is a screenshot of the resources the widgets are taking.....

[Topper]

Let me try again....LOL

[Nemesis]

The problem with the widgets is anyone can program them. No one spends the time to optimize the widgets for less memory usage. One of them might not be bad on the bloat, but once you start getting several of them, it gets worse and worse.

I see the same thing happening with wordpress plugins. It's easy to program a wordpress plugin that does the job dirty without caring about cpu usage on your server, but it's much more difficult to get one that doesn't make you page slow to a crawl. People start to get several plugins on their site and pretty soon the whole thing gets slower and slower.

An example are the filters for plugins, every time a page pulls up it is looking for the filters, even if the function won't run. Some plugin authors use filters even when they dont even have to.

 

[Topper]

Very valid points Nemesis....when I go looking for a widget, I look to see if the widget has been maintained, modified, improved, etc.  by the original programmer.  To me is a committment by the programmer to what he's published and shows the programmer is interested in making improvements to his work.

LOL...not that its helped the memory bloat, but perhaps kept it from being worse!