Yahoo! released an updated version of Konfabulator with a new name, Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.0, on Tuesday. Yahoo! Widget Engine is an application that manages and runs mini-applications on your desktop, similar to Appleis Dashboard. The updated version renames some bundled widgets to reflect Yahoo!is branding, adds several new widgets, addressed some bug issues, and enhanced the application code.
Yahoo! purchased Konfabulator earlier this year, and changed the application from shareware to freeware.
Some users are reporting that Yahoo! Widget Engine is unstable, breaks certain widgets, or does not run on their Mac. The Mac Observer tested it on a stock 1.67GHz G4 PowerBook running Mac OS X 10.4.3, and did not have any stability problems with the application, or any of the arndomly selected widgets we launched.
Yahoo! Widget Engine is not compatible with Dashboard widgets, and requires Mac OS X 10.3 or higher. It is free, and available for download at the Yahoo! Widgets Web site.
[Updated - This article has been updated with the findings from our application stability tests.]