In order to ease the interaction between users and its portal, Yahoo has decided to acquire Konfabulator, a JavaScript engine developed by Pixoria, which can be used to quickly access Internet services, such as weather forecast, stock market information, online dictionaries or TV shows without having to open the browser.

Widgets have become popular since Apple included them in their latest operating system, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4. Yahoo has announced that from now, Konfabulator will be available for free.

Konfabulator presents on its site a series of widgets created by users and Yahoo will continue to offer free access to the program's source code, although they are not intended for Yahoo's services.

Users will be able to use Yahoo Widgets to access weather, financial, web search or image sharing services offered by the portal.

Not long ago, rumors related to a browser developed by Yahoo have started to circulate. Is it possible that the widgets are the first step towards a browser which will include Yahoo Toolbar, e-mail and Yahoo's IM client?