According to the help files of Captivate:
Widgets are configurable SWF objects created in Flash. Widgets can help provide enhanced interactivity and rich content rapidly.
To make it short, a Widget is an external .swf file that adds an extra feature to the already rich set of tools provided by Captivate. These Widgets are created outside of Captivate with tools such as Adobe Flash Professional or Adobe Flash Builder.
Tip
Creating Widgets
Creating Widgets is reserved to developers with a somewhat deep knowledge of Flash, ActionScript, and JavaScript, and it is way beyond the scope of this book. If you have such knowledge and want to start programming your own Captivate Widgets, make sure you subscribe to the blog of Tristan Ward at http://www.infosemantics.com.au/widgetking/. You can also read the following tutorials to get you started: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/06/captivate_widgets_tutorial_cre.html and http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2010/10/flex...