Widget: Application

The Application Widget serves as a container for third-party widgets provided by other apps installed on the user's device (e.g., Weather, Calendar, Music Player). Total Launcher extracts these standard Android views for user placement in the setup.

The image represents a view of Page 6 of 13 of the application widgets on the device used to capture the image. It is shown to provide the reader with sample view the application widget dialog. These application widgets may not be on any user's device. A user's device will only show a list of application widgets installed on their device.

Android application developers will encode widget containers for specialized data display setups for their applications. When these are available with the application Total Launcher extracts and displays each in the application widget dialog for the user to select and install on a page, drawer, or window.

Each application widget developer provides for the customization opportunities of their respective widgets. However Total Launcher, in managing an application widget, focuses on the visual presentation of the wrapper container. The dialog for the application widget Option Edit is shown below

• Rounded corner radius - The widget's container defaults to a square but can be resized by tap-hold and grab of a container corner. The user can choose to have corners rounded by selecting the desired radius with a range of 0 (square), 300 (circle) to 575 (a rhombus-type, 4 vertices object with curvilinear sides as shown in this image.
• Opacity - This allows the user to affect how much transparency is permitted when viewing the underlying contents, in this case the application widget. The launcher option provides a sliding scale from 0 (opaque or container content is totally blocked) to 100 (fully transparent). This option will create the effect on the entire widget container, meaning overall colors will be fully viewed (100) or muted (50) or the content blocked (0). Most likely, meaningful use of this option would be in combination with either the background option of color or dynamic color to provide a tonal quality to the widget container

• Configure widget - This dialog appears for any Application Widget. However, it can only be activated by a user if the application developer has enabled the configuration feature. It will not work on every application widget as shown with the notification in the image below.

• Background - Defines the background of the widget container. For complete discussion on background see Background.
• Margins: Allows adjustment of the margins surrounding the widget in its container. For complete discussion on setting margins see Understanding Margins in Total Launcher.

There is a functional difference between resizing and scaling a widget and how it affects the widget's background size. Resizing the widget frame (dragging the corner handles) changes the container size, but the content inside does not automatically stretch to fill the new space. If the widget content appears too small or floats in empty space after resizing, use the rotate-transform icon (then tap it's Transform button and use the top slider [10-100]) to zoom the widget with it's contents which will not change the background size.

• Resize - Changes the boundaries of the container.
• Scale - Zooms the widget content and it's container (background).

Application widgets retain their native functionality. If a widget contains a scrollable list (like a generic RSS reader or Calendar), it will intercept touch inputs. Swiping directly on the widget will scroll the list content rather than swiping the launcher page.

It is critical to remember that Total Launcher only saves the placeholder for Application Widgets, not the widget or it's internal settings when a backup is made.

When restoring a backup, the specific configuration of the third-party widget (e.g., the specific city in a weather widget or the account in a mail widget) is not restored. The user must tap the placeholder to re-initialize the widget and manually re-apply its internal settings unless the widget's developer has has offered a save setting or restore feature itself.