Following earlier information about Microsoft's plans to introduce widget support with Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft has now given more information about its so called "Windows Mobile Widgets".
Widgets are already well known from the web, from desktop OS as well as other mobile platforms have already introduced a kind of widgets support. A good way to think of a Windows Mobile Widget is as a "Portable chunk of the web" or just basically a rich internet application.

Widgets are written using all the web technologies we know and love (HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript) and, since they will be powered under the covers of Microsoft new Internet Explorer Mobile 6, they will have full access to flash and other ActiveX controls available on the device (like MediaPlayer Mobile).

The interesting thing about Microsoft's Windows Mobile widget platform is, and this is unusual for widgets, that it allows them to look and feel, to the end user, as a normal standalone application does; they have their own start menu icon, they show up as an individual apps in task manager and, most importantly, they have full control of the menu bar as any other application would.

For the new Windows Mobile widgets platform, Microsoft is implementing the latest draft of the emerging W3C standard for mobile widget applications (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/) which makes it unlikely that Windows Vista and Windows 7 gadgets will work on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

Windows Mobile Widgets will become available with Windows Mobile 6.5. It's not yet known if Microsoft's widgets platform will be available for Windows Mobile 6 phones which got an official update to Internet Explorer Mobile 6.

Cheers ~ Arne