Right after the first beta of Opera 10.10 sporting Opera Unite, the fine folks in Norway released the first labs build of a new Opera feature all together: widgets.

Hey, what, widgets?! Yeah, widgets. But we've already had widgets for ages! Yeah, true, but this time you don't need Opera. What? Wait? You don't make sense. Exactly! =)

The new Opera Labs build of Opera features the ability to run Opera Widgets without the need for Opera to run as a browser. This also means that each widget runs in its own process, thus if it should crash it won't take your rich collections of web applications with it.

Opera Software's take on web applications seems a little tidy bit different than for instance Google Chrome (or Mozilla Prism or Fluid), which allows you to "extract" any web site to run in a separate window with a shortcut on your desktop. Similarly, Opera Widgets are using normal web standards for rendering and logic. However, Opera Widgets are represented as .wgt files that can either be automatically installed from Opera, or download with any other browser and after clicking it will "install" itself powered by Opera's Widget Runtime.

Besides being a small widget on your desktop, it can evolve to being a full fledged, native replacing, application that works on any (Opera supported) platform. Opera Widgets API supports file I/O access, shortcuts, native borders and more. Opera is working on getting the widget specification ready and approved by W3C, to make it popular amongst other candidates like Apple, Google and Mozilla.

If you're warmed up now you can try the build from Opera Labs and don't forget to read some additional interesting stuff about it. Oh, and do leave a comment with your experiences so the Opera developers can have some little luv (sometimes associated as fluffy warm feeling on the inside) as well.