The W3C Web Application Formats several new and update working drafts about Widgets:
A widget is an interactive single purpose application for displaying and/or updating local data or data on the Web, packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a user's machine or mobile device. A widget may run as a stand alone application (meaning it can run outside of a Web browser), or may be embedded into a Web document. In this document, the runtime environment on which a widget is run is referred to as a widget user agent and a running widget is referred to as an instantiated widget. Prior to instantiation, a widget exists as a widget resource. For more information about widgets, see the Widget Landscape document.
To be clear, this specification describes the requirements for desktop style widgets (akin to Dashboard, Opera Widgets, and Yahoo! Widgets). This document does not address the requirements of "web widgets", such as iGoogle Gadgets or Windows Live Gadgets.
The drafts include:
