Repeated references to RDF, SKOS, LOD, and REST services can sometimes seem an impenetrable wall of jargon leaving some people cold – how do we actually use all this stuff? Well the good news is that 99% of what you need is already implemented here at HeritageData. To use any of the controlled vocabularies in your own web pages or applications you can employ the brand new SENESCHAL widgets. This is a suite of predefined visual user interface controls that dynamically obtain vocabulary information from the web services.

The controls provide vocabulary navigation, search and selection functionality that can be embedded directly within your own web pages. A set of associated demonstration pages show how to configure and use each widget control, and how to combine them to create functionally rich user interfaces.

This is a preliminary release of the widget controls, and hopefully they will serve as exemplars to engender discussion and additional ideas about what people might want to do with these vocabularies. The widget source code is available as Open Source, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) arrangement. Try the widgets out and let us know how you get on – we welcome constructive feedback on how to improve and extend them!