Widget Maker X - 1.3.4

After looking at and comparing all three Widget making tools on the market, I've got to say that this one didn't last long on our hard drive. There is NO reason that ANY program should ever ask you for your Admin password after the program has installed. There is just too much potential for password abuse. It's obvious that the programs author is going to come up with a wonderful gem of an excuse as to why they "need" your Admin password, but common sense says that no excuse is really good enough. No other Widget program needs you to enter in your password, and yet those programs still are able to make Widgets for you. This program has a lot of potential, but it won't get too far as long as it keeps asking for everyones Admin password. Like most people I cast my vote for Widgetarium as the best of all 3 Widget programs to date.

Please let me know anything that you would like to see added to Widget Maker by email (web@lajdesignsw.com).

Most of the features that I add are from user requests. When creating Widget Maker, I wanted to get to a point where I could quickly make Widgets (mainly using the wizard). I think that I have made it to that point.

It seems that these recent attempts at a limited function widget IDE are all overpriced. MUCH more complex IDEs (NetBeans comes to mind, weighing in at over 77MB) are free in the Open Source arena.

If your "product" proves to be the best widget IDE, wouldn't you want to have 5 times as many users praising your efforts because you charged a token fee of $3 instead of the current $15-17? Or who knows how many users if you didn't charge anything, but accepted donations (some of the *greatest* names in Mac add-on software have always done this, and that's how they became the greatest)?

If I had to spend $16.50 per tool for each extendable feature of Mac OS X I'd go broke. AppleScript, Automator and Widgets to name a few ... that adds up really fast. Something that I use every day like a browser, text processor, terminal program, FTP client, etc. are worth more than an (IDE) editor for Widgets and I get those all for free. So why charge for your tool that would get occasional, but appreciated use from a relatively small community of potential users?

Is it "fame" from happy users or the money you're after? You've already said that you did this tool because you wanted it for yourself. Sharing it with others doesn't require that you make it seem like such expensive shareware.

/Marty

This is a cool idea, but it seems to have some bugs because I can only open some widgets, not all.
Also, I MUCH prefer the combo WCode/Widget Creator (www.widgetfactor.com) which I downloaded a while ago even though it is shareware. I find their package well worth the price because it lets me do more things than widget maker. For example, it makes use of drag and drop to change widget files which is really cool and practical. Most importantly, their interface is "prettier" and allows me to access every single file, including images, that compose my widget. Also it includes widget creator which offers graphic templates to speed me along.
Sorry but my choice between the two is made! :)

bombs on me occasionally, but it is a beta. great idea!