Widgets

Description

Widgets was introduced in PS3 firmware 2.00 as a way to display dynamic information from web servers in XMB, are very dependant and managed by the Web Browser

The only official widget (included between firmwares 2.00 and 3.00) was called Information Board.

In firmware 3.00 widgets was removed because his initial purpose of displaying dynamic content was superceeded by Life with PlayStation (in firmware 2.40) and later by the "what's news" display mode (in firmware 3.00)

• Notes
  • PSP introduced widgets in firmware 5.50 (the same information board inherited from PS3). This firmware update for PSP also had some improvements related with the web browser (Internet search for games directly from the XMB, Trend Micro Web Security, and Trend Micro Kids' Safety). See: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/04/20/psp-firmware-v550-update/

Information Board

It was posible to enable or disable Information board by pressing triangle over his icon in network column. The way is built allowed them to add more widgets in case was needed (but never happened, they removed it instead of adding more). For an overview of how was working originally see:

• http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/informationboard/informationboard.html
• http://ps3explained.com/beginner/using-the-information-board/

The removal of this widget was made only partially! (are still supported by loading the widget from external devices), so it should be possible to (re)create it, if not create even more widgets to add to the XMB experience of the user.

The widget management was well integrated in the firmware, so there is a list of files/functions/calls related with them:

Other settings related with widgets:

• Information Board QA Server: Off/On (see: QA_Flagging). Debug XMB loads the widget by using the view ID "root_info" and Query "host_provider_flash". Same than retail XMB, but debug needs this setting enabled
• XMB loads all available widgets by using the function host://localhost/q? and the subclass x-host/widget (see: XMBML Functions), and are displayed using the class x-xmb/xmliboard (but the class x-xmb/xmliboard is not used anymore and has been replaced by x-xmb/xmlnpsignup). See: XMBML Coding

• 

  Widgets (information board - use)

• 

  Widgets (information board - tab)

• 

  Widgets (information board - news)

Widgets related files

dev_flash/vsh/module

xai_plugin.sprx

This file was removed, see: xai_plugin

To use xai_plugin.sprx in a different firmware version is needed to resign the file with the keys of the firmware where is going to be used. In this example is used scetool for the resigning with the "template" option and the file explore_plugin_full.sprx taken from the modern firmware

Decrypt

scetool.exe -d xai_plugin.sprx xai_plugin_dec.prx

Encrypt

scetool.exe --template explore_plugin_full.sprx --sce-type=SELF --skip-sections=FALSE --compress-data=TRUE --encrypt xai_plugin_dec.prx xai_plugin_new.sprx

dev_flash/vsh/resource

explore_category_network.rco

There is a widget entry missing in the rcoxml

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/explore/xmb

category_widget.xml

Widgets XMBML configuration file, this file exists in all firmwares with some segments disabled

Code Sample

category_network.xml

Widget icons loaded by XMBML in Network column, widgets related segments was removed in firmware 3.00 by removing his <View id> and his attr

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/explore/icon

widget.png

widget configuration icon, this file exists in all firmwares

dev_flash/vsh/resource/xai

extensions.xml

Contains: extensions.entry.module=Widget and extensions.entry.plugin=xai_plugin

Code Sample

widgets.xml

Contains: xai.widget.url=/dev_hdd0/widget/npdrm/informationboard

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/silk/etc

fontinfo-Xai.xml

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/silk_nas/etc

fontinfo-Xai.xml

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/silk/xai/widgets/informationboard/

Information board main executable and settings files, removed in 3.00

rss.swf

Main widget window, in shockwave flash format

For a preview of how it works you can drag-and-drop the file to your PC webbrowser... or use a shockwave flash editor/player

Icon.png

widget icon identifyer

config.xml

config for rss.swf

Code Sample

setting.xml

RSS URL list by Target_ID, for non QA

Code Sample

setting_qa.xml

RSS URL list by Target_ID, for QA

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/silk/xai/widgets/informationboard/strings/

1 folder named strings containing 16 files for languages named: informationboard_<language>.xml (e.g: informationboard_german.xml, informationboard_french.xml, etc...)

informationboard_<language>.xml

Example from informationboard_english.xml

Code Sample

dev_flash/vsh/resource/silk/xai/widgets/informationboard/<language>.lproj/

15 folders for different languages named <language>.lproj (e.g: German.lproj, French.lproj, etc...)... every folder contains a file named InfoPlist.strings with the same data

InfoPlist.strings

Example:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00000000  43 46 42 75 6E 64 6C 65 44 69 73 70 6C 61 79 4E  CFBundleDisplayN
00000010  61 6D 65 20 3D 20 22 49 6E 66 6F 72 6D 61 74 69  ame = "Informati
00000020  6F 6E 20 42 6F 61 72 64 22 3B                    on Board";

• Notes
  • Mac widgets also use .lproj localization so maybe can use custom language files.

dev_hdd0/widget/npdrm/informationboard

The existence of this path is a deduction because there is other file where it can be seen this is an alternative path to load widgets. The file contents on this path is unknown but most probably are the same files used in the informationboard directory under dev_flash, so the only difference is the device (dev_hdd0 instead of dev_flash), and the npdrm signature ?

• Notes
  • Loaded by Query "host_provider_flash" using src="host://localhost/q?path=/dev_hdd0/widget/npdrm&suffix=informationboard&subclass=x-host/widget"
    • The src XMBML code in the line above means:
      • host://localhost/q? (this is a XMBML Function)
      • path=/dev_hdd0/widget/npdrm (the path where are located the files that are going to be loaded)
      • suffix=informationboard (in this case seems to be part of the path, also the name of the widget)
      • subclass=x-host/widget (indicates what to do with the files by his type)