The common rendering engine (CRE) is a shared component that provides the support framework for rendering widgets in software applications. Widget is a collective term that describes both iWidgets and OpenSocial gadgets.

The following topics cover best practices for developing and designing highly functional widgets with optimal performance.

The IBM® Social Business Toolkit represents a new approach to interacting with and extending Social Business software, including Lotus Notes®, Connections, Lotus® Sametime®, LotusLive™, and more.

After creating an event in the last module, this module begins with a lesson to configure the data model to control how the gadget renders.

The following topics cover best practices for developing and designing highly functional widgets with optimal performance.

To complete the gadget, use the information in this module to link the event model and gadget.

In this module, you learned how to register your application with the IBM® Social Business Toolkit server so your clients can opt in and receive data from your applications in their activity streams. You also saw an example of a common Open Authorization (OAuth) consumer implementation.

In this module, you will integrate your gadget into the JSON data model and manually post the data model to the IBM® Social Business Toolkit server on Lotus® Greenhouse Labs. You will use the API test environment to see how users can interact with the event in the activity stream as an embedded ...

Although component models for creating widgets typically support portability across container implementations, sometimes widgets lose their ability to be portable for various reasons. This topic provides tips for making sure that widgets, including both iWidgets and OpenSocial gadgets, remain ...

In this module, you learn how to build an event model for your experience.

In this lesson, you will update your gadget XML file with the JavaScript™ function that loads and replaces the default content with new content in the gadget. Using the Renovations Travel System scenario, the new content is the travel update that a user sends to other users as an event in their ...

The embedded experience lets users quickly view an event and respond to the event in context. Using this tutorial, you can learn how to build and implement an embedded experience gadget.

In this lesson, you will add your new gadget to the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data model that you created in Module A and define the fields of data that will display in the gadget.

In this module, you will learn how to register your application with the IBM® Social Business Toolkit server so that your users can opt in and receive data from your applications in their activity streams. Also, you will see an example of a common Open Authorization (OAuth) consumer ...

Use the following guidelines for eventing:

OAuth is an open standard-based security architecture and protocol. This guide helps you integrate your application OAuth with the IBM® Social Business Toolkit.

As you design and code widgets, use the following general best practices as a guideline:

This topic identifies performance issues for gadgets.

In this lesson, you will create an XML file that defines a gadget that sends travel updates to people as events in their activity streams. Use the Shindig gadget editor to see how the gadget displays on the page for users.

In this lesson, you will learn the basics of the XML code that makes up a gadget.

In this module, you learned about OpenSocial gadgets, including how to code them in XML and populate them with data so that they can render your events in the activity stream.

Here's a quick demonstration that shows how simple and easy it is to add a Google Gadget (in this case the one from Facebook) to the Lotus Connections homepage, and all in less than 1 minute!

The Lotus Learning Widget for IBM® Connections 4 is now available! You can use the Learning Widget to view and filter learning materials for Connections.