Delivering Widgets

After you've created your widget, you need to distribute it to your customers. This chapter outlines steps that you should take to ensure that your customers have a pleasant experience downloading and installing your widget.

Packaging Your Widget

Widgets are much less complex than applications and should provide a light-weight install experience. The preferred packaging experience is to have widgets delivered in zip archive format and placed on your web server for download. Only archive the .wdgt bundle, omitting all other files. Link to the widget archive from your website to enable the download.

When downloaded using Safari, the zipped widget is automatically unarchived and the user is presented with an install dialog, asking them if they want the widget to be installed. When downloaded using other web browsers, users need to manually open the widget to show the widget installer.

Delivery Tips

Here are some tips for you to keep in mind when readying your widget for delivery: