About every six months, someone comes up with a new technology to distribute fancier and fancier kinds of information over the Web. Just about every week, someone comes up with a new way to use that technology. Desktop widgets, which Microsoft offers in its Active Desktop Gallery, are samples of what these technologies can do.
Desktop widgets are slightly fancy Web pages.
The idea of the widgets is to be an information source you can put on your desktop and forget about, sort of like a radio playing in the background. When something catches your attention, you can get more information about it. In either case, click the Web tab. To see the Microsoft gallery of desktop widgets, click the New button to tell Windows 98 to create a new active desktop item. Quicker than a New York minute, your computer connects to the Internet, and Internet Explorer displays a Web page at the Microsoft Web site.