Have you ever used Konfabulator (K)?  It's an iteresting product that allows you to run widgets (basically a bundle of xml and javascript that describe little "applets") on your desktop.  These widgets represent standalone (although widgets can communicate with each other), very simple applications that can interact with your computer and also with the network.  I was interested in where the data was coming from in the stock ticker widget that comes with the installation of K. 

What I found is that K exposes an object that is very similar to an XMLHttpRequest and the MSXML peer objects called URL.  The methods and properties vary (not sure why the makers of K wouldn't try to match the current interfaces to ease cross-host scripting) in name, but are very similar in function.  So, I thought, got a fairly decent start on a cross-browser toolkit, how about cross host?  I set out to modify the toolkit then so that it could be used without modifications in Firefox, IE and now K.

To do this I basically just wrapped K's URL object and, using a dom js that comes in one of the shipped widgets, added some function names and prototypes so that the dom js could look and act like mozilla's dom and ie's dom.

I haven't gone back and tested this in IE and FF yet, but I got a decent K widget going that might be fun to mess around with.  What is nice is that you really only have to figure out how to make a widget, any widget.  The sforce API just works. 

The widget attached is a modification to Arlo Rose's mini what to do widget.  Basically it logs into salesforce.com when the widget loads, if the preferences contain your username and password.  If not, a message is shown and you should right click the little feller and set the preferences.

Once logged in, the widget will go get a set of open tasks from your salesforce.com instance for the logged in user.  There are several views of the task list that are available from a context menu.  When you click the widget you have three options that appear.  For each task shown, there is a magnifying glass icon and an x icon.  The magnifying glass will pop a new browser window to the details of the task you clicked without asking you to login.  The x will cause the task to be marked as completed (you will be prompted).

The last option is a little + button on the bottom right to create a new task.  Depending on the choice that you made in the options for Add Mode, either a new browser will open directly to the New Task screen, or a simple K dialog form will be displayed to collect the data then create the task.

The widget uses a polling mechanism to keep the list up to date.  The polling interval should not be set to execute more frequently that once every couple of minutes.  (If that is too long, right click the widget and click Refresh).

Some ideas that might be fun and actually useful for K widgets for salesforce.com might be:

• dashboard widget (imaging "unhooking" your favorite dashboard item on your salesforce.com Home page and hosting it on the desktop!)
• Document managment (simple bi-directional drag and drop to open and save documents to the documents tab).
• Big Deal alerts.
• SControl uploader

Because K requires a relative path to any resources used, including javascript files, all the js files for the toolkit are included in the widget.  This means that the toolkit included in this widget is not the toolkit endorsed by salesforce.com, but I'm fairly certains some of these changes will make it into the official toolkit. This will likely be determined by how many people want the toolkit to support K, so please let me know if you think K support is important or not.

Cheers.

Download sforcetasks_2.widget