The W3C Web Application Formats Working Group has posted a second last call working draft of Widgets 1.0 Requirements. "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), and it is envisioned that the kind of widgets being standardized by this effort will one day be embedded into Web documents. In this document, the runtime environment in which a widget is run is referred to as a widget user agent. Note that running widgets may be the specific purpose of a widget user agent, or it may be a mode of operation of a more genetic user agent (eg. a Web browser). A widget running on a widget user agent is referred to as an instantiated widget. Prior to instantiation, a widget exists as a widget resource."
