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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Widget System possible through Notification Center in iOS 5


Though Apple did not announce any official APIs to developers for developing widgets but they did leave some clues to them. Apple released 2 widgets namely – Weather and Stock Ticker with the notification center and this is enough to ignite developer’s mind. Following this trail iOS developer @WillFour20 proved it possible to create widgets for notification center, opening an era of custom widgets for jailbreakers down the line.

It’s easy, by including a class that implements BBWeeAppController protocol any application can be accessed just by tapping it. This works not only with the stock iOS apps but also with the AppStore apps.
Widget system for iOS 5For instance – Phone App that has a list of favorite contacts can be displayed in iOS notification center. Won’t it be really easy to just tap and call a favorite contact directly from notification center instead of diving into Phone app and then proceeding for the call? A few developers have already started to work on this new avenue and some of then even claims that SBSettings can be integrated with notification center viz. Wi-fi, bluetooth, brightness, data, location etc. toggles can be integrated directly into notification center.. doesn’t that sound great?

I am looking forward to these awesome bunch of small codes to be integrated into Notification Center, are you too looking forward to it? Share your love and ideas about widgets in the comments.





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