Welcome to the Forcewebs blogg. This blogg is in English since it involves articles viewed among readers who are not familiar with the Swedish language. A lot of the content is about the Widgetplus project since it's a cornerstone for several other projects with Forcewebs involved.

Changing the Forcewebs layout
26 February, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


The Forcewebs website was a bit out of date and a new touch was needed to make things fresh with the latest information and projects at display.

The basic idea was to push for the three cornerstones in Forcewebs business: Web, Photo and Graphics. Web is the basic part of it, but web is a way to present text and photos. It's also a way to view graphical design in digital form. It's all linked together.

Sneak preview on what's coming
28 January, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


The preparation fore coming the official Widgetplus launch, has been including among other things, taking on the design job of the window frames and the desktop's background settings interface. Using the present Vista style for Widgetplus is good for several users who are accustomed to the Windows interface, but putting a design of our own on the Widgetplus environment will make it's brand a bit more unique.

The present interface for setting the background image or colour isn't the best available on the market yet. We are going to make a move to improve our position in that aspect, including a number of background themes with several images and providing an extended colour selection tool. You can still choose to upload one of your own pictures using the MiniDo file explorer and setting it as background that way.

For a preview of the coming click the link below, it's a screen shot of the background settings in the new style window. It's not all written in stone yet, but this is an indicator of what's coming up.
Window Screen shot »»

Configuring the file explorer
21 January, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


The next step in the development of the Widgetplus file explorer will be adding the hierarchic tree structure as an option. We are going to keep on adding more options an features, this is the reason why:

It's a matter of preference how you want the file explorer to be configured. Speaking for myself, I like different view setting with information presented differently, depending on what I want to do at present. I like to see images as thumbnails since it gives me a better input on selecting something where the name of the file might not say that much, but seeing the actual image is the key. But in the case of managing large amounts of html-documents, a detailed file list with date and size in a nice vertical row, makes that job more convenient for me.

We are developing more options for our Widgetplus users. I don't know if you share my preferences on file explorer configuration? But seriously... who cares about my preferences? There are options for you to configure the file explorer your own way... the way you feel comfortable with it.

About file explorers
20 January, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


The file explorer of Widgetplus is going through a constant development adding more functionality all the time. The basic idea of this widget is to make file management on the web convenient with a familiar environment, starting with basic functions like browsing through the hierarchy of folders, opening files, adding , deleting... and so on. Doing this is not that easy if you want it to work well in different operative systems like Windows, Linux and Mac, using a variety of web browsers. For instance, you can right click for an extra menu in Windows but not on Mac. As consequence you have to develop a user interface solution that can be used all over the web, making some compromising necessary to find a useful design.

It is still well worth the effort to develop a file browser widget, since the use of web as a platform, makes file management borderless and very accessible for all kind of users. We do believe the future belongs to the Widgetplus file browser and that it will come to use in many places.

Web 3.0 - Our position on the web
20 January, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


To explain what kind of situation we're in, let's step back in time for an analogy. Back in 1880 when motor cars was a new thing, it was a bit tricky to make people see why this would be something significant, more than just a stupid toy. Looking at the established competition, the way to travel was by horse and a wagon. By looks pretty similar to the motor cars, except for the horse. They could both transport people and some loads and in those ages cars were no faster than a horse and wagon and on top of that, less reliable. That changed rapidly in the years to come however.

Motorised transportation was not unique either, the railways with their pretty fast steam trains was already an established way to travel. Slim chances for the motor car, there's already an established market for transportation, so what good is it? The obvious answer isn't what it was at its infancy 1880 when it just started to develop, but what potential it had to develop!

Today horse and wagon or sulky are not going any faster. It's days as major transportation are over, now used for sports and amusement. You can't expand the limits any further. The steam trains was replaced with better electrical ones, but the car with it's combustion engine had the potential to develop far beyond the other technologies. And it did!

The combustion engine was much smaller and could put out much more power in relation to its weight, as a result it didn't stay as a car part only. The low weight and high power made it possible to propel airplanes up in the air, it was placed on bicycles... etc. There was so much to this new invention... Widgetplus is in that position right now! Coming through as a major step in development... you haven't seen it all yet!

Rough design
15 January, 2008
Editor: Anders Magnusson


Widgetplus is still in development mode with a less than perfect graphical approach. The same can be claimed about the layout of the menus and some procedures in the file management.

Be patient... you might have noticed that the design and procedures are changing and developing step by step. We are developing Widgetplus that way. Function comes first, test and development of more and more functions are in a constant progress.

A developed structure of the layout to make it more user friendly is the second step, and the third step will be applying our own graphical design with our colour scheme and our logos.

The graphical design and logos has been ready for a while now, awaiting the official launch. It will not be a hard job for us either. With all design set by style sheets, we can change it for something different as quick as you can edit a single line of code.

Vista for web?
27 December, 2007
Editor: Anders Magnusson


At a quick glance at the Widgetplus desktop it may look like an attempt to produce an OS for the web. It does have some graphical characteristics similar to the what you are used to in Windows XP or Vista. The start menu is down in the left corner, there's a desktop background with icons and window frames that can be resized, moved around and so on, we even applied Vista like transparent window framework for a while.

Widgetplus also performs a whole lot of tasks expected from an OS like file management, having applications co-operating or sharing profile data. But a true OS are also controlling and accessing the hardware functions on a PC or server, it's also a platform with applications specifically written for use in that environment and normally not applicable elsewhere.

This is the major difference between the traditional OS and Widgetplus, the Widgetplus operates in all kind of environments on the web... with ease.

Back to the headline: Vista for web? Not really.... the reason it looks like some kind of cross hybrid of Windows XP, Vista and some other stuff is because most PC users knows this layout from before. It's like putting steering wheel, pedals and other controls in a familiar position in a car. You know it when you see it.... the desktop with icons and file browser windows is also a nice way of presenting a large number of applications in an easy to grasp environment, as simple as that is.