Yahoo just released version 4 of Yahoo Widgets. View the overview of enhancements below. If you want more detail, check out the Yahoo blog .

Speedier than ever

• We heard you, and we’ve made big improvements in performance
• Uses up less of your system memory compared to past versions

Live, at-a-glance view

• Mini Widgets bring updates and live info to you in a compact package
• Keep your widgets neatly organized with the new Widget Dock

New Widgets by Yahoo!

• Gallery Widget: Browse the Widget Gallery witout opening a web browser
• Flickr Widget: Hooray! Upload, tag, and display Flickr photos.

And, some things are the same as ever…

• The most Widgets available anywhere online… over 4,000 and still growing!
• Works on both Macs and Windows PCs

This list can be found on the Yahoo! Widgets 4 Upgrade page.

Since I am working on a widget as we speak, I dug through the Reference Manual and found these changes.

Basic CSS Support

Yahoo Widgets now supports basic cascading style sheet attributes.

Canvas

You can draw lines, rectangles, circles, etc. This makes my job much easier on the widget that I’m currently developing!

SQLite

This is cool, you can now communicate with a SQL database. Nice! Now I could make a widget to manage my blog or maybe I will convert Ajax Messages into a widget… hmm… interesting doctor jones.

DOM API

You can now use appendChild() and removeChild() to manipulate the DOM.

My Notes

The new widget docker is nice to keep everything organized. The canvas makes drawing much simpler (graphs, etc). They sped up the engine (Up to 40% CPU Use Reduction), speed has been an issue since the Konfabulator days. The addition of SQLite allows developers to make more diverse and dynamic widgets. I noticed when you download a widget from the widget gallery it instantly open, simple but cool!

Yahoo remains to be the only cross-platform widget engine. If you have some time check out the new Yahoo! Widgets .