3.2.  How it works?

What do I have to do to use it on my computer?

1.      You download a framework on your computer (small foot print usually: 500k to 1 or 2 Megs at most but some are bigger...)

2.      You select the “awarelets” you need for your dashboard, usually, you can select some on “awarelets” libraries maintained on-line and issued from the framework user group (as awarelets are “easy” to design)

3.      You setup each awarelet with your personal requirements (for example, if you want to monitor weather condition, you enter the nearest town…)

4.      Awarelets then periodically (fixed or user setting) scan the data source they are linked with, those data sources may be local to the file system and system resources or remote on server on the intranet or internet.

5.      When new data is available, the awarelet display window is refreshed, older data may be forgotten and depending on setting and framework, some alarming may be handled (popup windows and / or  sound and blinking features)

What are the Framework and Awarelets Functions and features?

·         Adding / removing “awarelets” (let’s call awarelets the widgets, gadgets, panels or Klips of the various vendors). May be as simple has clicking on a web link!

·         Common User Interface for display and setup of “awarelets”

·         Useful function, like caching and alarming may also be available

·         Awarelets are based on a mix of declarative code, usually based on xml and some scripting part to allow specific processing

·         Awarelets share some common display and GUI features enforced by the framework

·         Special GUI awarelets needs some c++ or other high level languages, using the framework API. Scripting languages, usually JavaScript is also possible.

·         Awarelets are able to source information from the local file system or from remote servers.

The awarelet has the following features from a user perspective:

·         Setup panels: parameter data sources, alarm setting. For example, for a Google news klip, one can parameter the country news and set some keywords to parameter the search. How to cache data may also be an option

·         A GUI interface capabilities

o       Customizable in order to fit the space requirement of the user.

o       Information presentation of the latest available information.

o       Browsing to go up to the data source, usually through hyper linking.

o       User data input. It can be used for searching some part of the data space

o       Presenting graphical data, for example, the daily evolution of a share quotation.

·         Awarelets categories

o       Aggregation of RSS news feeds

o       Time & Calendar function

o       Email monitoring

o       Web Space monitoring

o       Search engine filtering

o       Share quotation

·         An awarelet periodically scans the data source it is monitoring to keep the GUI in synch with what is happening and to trigger alarms if necessary

Which are available framework capabilities?