What is the difference between widgets and gadgets?

When I starting blogging,  I was totally confused with Gadgets and Widgets. I was wondering what is the difference between gadgets and widgets? I started “Google-ing” it to find out the truth. Several sites that I visited were using the word “widgets” and some other sites used “gadgets”. Making my confusion worse.


Finally, I found the best answer for my question and here it is.

A widget is a piece of reusable code that you can plug into virtually any website. A gadget acts just like a widget, often fulfilling the same purpose, but it is proprietary. It only works on a certain website or a specific set of websites.

For example, Google Gadgets can look and act like widgets. But they only work on Google pages.

A widget, on the other hand, works on any page that lets you add an HTML block. You can put them on your blog, or your personalized start page, or your personal website.-Source

You can see my sidebar contains Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Followers and Tags Cloud. Those are examples of widgets we are talking about. I am using code from FeedBurner for the recent posts, and recent comments widgets.

So, here comes my definition for “widgets”. Widgets are third party elements or codes that are reusable, easily-organizable and make a page more interesting.

Update: Google gadgets can work not only in Google pages but everywhere. Read about it here!

5 Replies to “What is the difference between widgets and gadgets?”

  1. @Anonymous

    Thx for your update……I will refer to the link you provided…..
    And I hope you will Name/URL option to leave a comment… =)

    Thx.

  2. hey This is Aravind. I'm using PRO indexer Theme..
    I want to keep gadjets in the bottom portion of the page as it was in Lunax.
    How can i do that?

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