SUPERKARAMBA

(Redirected from Superkaramba)

'SuperKaramba' is a tool that allows one to easily create functionality enhancement modules on a KDE desktop. Currently, only Linux is officially supported, although it also works well on FreeBSD and NetBSD. This program is similar to gDesklets for GNOME, Yahoo! Widget Engine for Windows and Mac OS X, DesktopX for Windows, and Dashboard for Mac OS X and also the 'gadgets' subset of Google Desktop for Microsoft Windows.
The interactive programs are usually embedded directly into the background and do not disturb the normal view of the desktop. The use of SuperKaramba is not limited to KDE, but certain libraries from KDE are required. SuperKaramba is included in KDE 3.5.

Contents

How does it work?

Possible Uses

History

Other widget engines

See also

External links

How does it work?

Authors use text files to create themes that define their widget. They then have the option of adding a Python, Ruby or JavaScript script to make the widget interactive.

Possible Uses

★ Interactive weather forecasts

★ Control and announcement of MP3 playing with XMMS or Amarok

★ Calendar and notes

★ Original clocks

★ System monitor for CPU, network, non-removable disks

★ Notification of new messages in mailboxes

★ News tickers and RSS aggregators

★ Animated menu bars

★ Custom toolbars

★ Search tools

History

Karamba was originally written by Hans Karlsson as a school project in March 2003. It gained a lot of popularity when it was uploaded to kde-look and people began writing themes for it. Karamba only functioned on text files that were written with pseudo-xml format. It became so popular so quickly that Hans had to hand over the project to others who had time to expand upon what he had begun.
By the end of April 2003, Adam Geitgey took over maintenance of the project. He added python scripting support to karamba, which is where it took on a new name, SuperKaramba. Adam kept the project alive, added new features and applied patches from other developers until around April 2005. At that point a group of developers who wanted to move SuperKaramba even further, pushed to get it included in a KDE major release.
SuperKaramba is now a part of KDE 3.5 and some of the ideas that it presents will become part of KDE4’s desktop and panel interface called Plasma.

Other widget engines

★ adesklets (X11)

★ Amazing Brass

★ AveDesk: Small and memory efficient widgets engine for windows

★ Dashboard: Mac OS X widget engine

★ DesktopX (Windows)

★ dotWidget: Free and opensource widgets engine done in VB6

★ gDesklets (GNOME)

★ Google Desktop

★ Kapsules: Widget engine done in C#

★ Litestep: Freeform GUI for Microsoft Windows

★ Opera: Widget engine built into Opera 9.

★ Samurize

★ Windows Sidebar / Microsoft Gadgets

★ Yahoo! Widget Engine (formally known as Konfabulator): Windows and Mac OS X compatible widgets engine.

See also

★ SuperKaramba Tutorial

★ Comparison of widget engines

External links

★ Sourceforge Project Homepage

★ Karamba Themes at kde-look.org

★ Karamba Themes at Biodesign.com.ar