As promised at our London developer workshop, over the next few weeks we will use this blog to let you know about some of the features of the Joost widget API, and also the data services which provide the information environment in which widgets live. You'll be hearing a lot about Joost widgets; the hows and whys of creating and publishing them, alongside tips and tricks for making a richer, more social and connected way of watching television.

Our high level overview of Joost Widgets says:

"Built from simple, powerful, and standardised Web technologies, widgets are independently developed software components that run in the Joost software."

We'll be diving into widget details more in later posts. But before we do that, we should say a few words about Joost itself. Joost's desktop client, underneath that glossy exterior, is in fact a highly customised web browser (Firefox, in fact). But this is no ordinary web browser! Rather than browsing traditional web pages, it fetches video content from the network and presents it to users in a TV-like manner. Right now Joost provides on-demand streaming access to thousands of professionally-produced videos, films and TV shows. As a developer, you'll primarily work with widgets within the Joost UI, and with web-based data services for search, information lookup and storage.

A Joost Widget is basically a special kind of web page that's packaged up and so viewers can load it into Joost. It can have access to information about Joost content, as well as having "remote control"-like powers for navigating within and between shows. The facilities we expose to you as third-party developers are based on those we've used ourselves to build Joost. With a little HTML, Javascript and CSS, you can create Joost add-ons that provide additional interactive features, connect users with external websites, or provide recommendation and community features.

We're big fans of standards; the Joost client simply wouldn't exist without HTML, SVG, XML, CSS, Javascript and other Web standards. But we also want to let you make use of some of the unique features of the Joost environment, such as the ability to display sprites on the screen, to access content protected by the Joost P2P network, and to make the most of new Joost features as we unveil them. So we expect to see a variety of widgets. Some may work with little or no changes from other widget platforms, while others will be integrated tightly into the shiny, video-filled world of Joost, and may not make sense outside of Joost. But in all cases they'll be using the same underlying web standards, and we hope that as a potential widget-maker you'll find Joost to be a uniquely engaging environment to show off and develop your skills.

As we evolve the widget platform, we really value your feedback and suggestions. We'll be watching for blog posts that link here, as well as participating via our public joost-dev discussion list. We want it to be as easy as possible for you to make fun and useful Joost extensions, and to link your sites and tools into Joost.