Konfabulator

Microsoft may be more interested in Visual Basic and C#, but it was only a matter of time before someone started writing Windows applications in JavaScript only. It's quick to learn, easy to tweak and can be put together using nothing more complex than Notepad. It's also familiar to anyone who knows the basics of scripting Flash or building an intelligent web page. Perhaps its most impressive application so far, though, is Konfabulator, which started life on the Mac and has earned itself an enthusiastic fan base.

As a JavaScript runtime environment that lives in Windows' System Tray, Konfabulator co-ordinates a series of Desktop widgets. These monitor the OS, your PC and peripherals, as well as take XML data from the Internet, then display the results in a series of mini-applications on your Desktop. Each of these widgets has been tailored to perform one simple task, and so you can dispense with the usual window furniture. The result is a series of attractive, glass-like creations that can be faded through ten levels of transparency down to little more than a wallpaper watermark, and set to either float or anchor themselves on the Desktop.

Our screenshot shows seven of the more useful widgets, including at the top a multiplatform search box, currently poised to launch Google with the term 'PC Pro', but just as happy interrogating Amazon, Lycos and a range of rivals. To the left, is a remote control for iTunes; top right, a weather forecasting widget, which can be customised for any town or city worldwide; and, at the bottom, a stock ticker tracking a range of tech shares.

The host application was initially designed to do just two things: show a weather forecast and monitor a notebook's remaining battery life, but in the five years since it first appeared it has been supplemented by a library of more than 600 plug-ins that do everything from displaying the strength of your Wi-Fi signal to monitoring the jam-cams in a range of US states.

You can try Konfabulator before you buy, and as such it displays an annoying nag screen if you don't cough up. That's a shame, as we feel it's a little overpriced, and if you've already paid for it on the Mac you can't use the same code to activate your Windows installation. A tenner would be a fairer asking price, and as such it loses two stars for value.

Author: Nik Rawlinson