NSLog();

9 Comments »

9 Responses to "QotD: Dashboard"

1. | Reply Simone Manganelli
   Posted 30 Apr 2005 at 11:55pm #
   

   I like Dashboard. I'm glad that widgets are only visible when you activate Dashboard, because I'd hate to have widgets cluttering up my normal window application space. I just want to flick my mouse or quickly press a key, use the widget, and be done with it. Apple implemented it perfectly IMHO.

2. | Reply Jared Barden
   Posted 01 May 2005 at 12:04am #
   

   I found this on macosxhints.com:

   If you'd like one of your Dashboard widgets to be available all the time, instead of only when you have activated Dashboard via F12, then activate the Dashboard dvelopment mode. Open the Terminal and type defaults write com.apple.Dashboard devmode YES and press Return. Then logout and log back in again. Now debugging mode is activated. To get a widget off of the Dashboard and onto your desktop, just do the following:

   Activate Dashboard by pressing F12 (or whatever key you've assigned to Dashboard).

   Begin dragging the widget.

   Press F12 again, before letting up on the mouse button.

   Drop the widget wherever you want it.

   You can do the same thing in reverse to drag the widget back onto the Dashboard. Also of interest: while a widget is frontmost, you can press Command-R to reload it. (This may be necessary if a widget is buggy and gets messed up somehow.) There's even a nifty Core Image-based twirl effect to accompany the reload.

3. | Reply Emily Hambidge
   Posted 01 May 2005 at 12:23am #
   

   I love it!!! I don't so much care about the dash being open. I like that I can personalize it. I, too, have seen that the Delicious library doesn't work. That's too bad because it would be really cool. There are a few widgets I would still like to see, too. ESPN scoreboard or a CNN runner would be cool. I would also like something that reminds me when it is someone's birthday. I don't use iCal, so something for Dashboard that can run separate from that would be great.

4. | Reply Josh Hattersley
   Posted 01 May 2005 at 1:11am #
   

   I like it, and am going to attempt to work it into my routine. However, they need to fix the responsiveness issues that come up when first loading network dependent widgets. If each Widget could load independently, as opposed to the whole loading process being held up by something like the weather display, that'd be a huge improvement.

5. | Reply ralph Scheuer
   Posted 01 May 2005 at 3:34pm #
   

   I like it, and I am getting used to hitting an F-key when looking up a word, the weather forecast or whatever. I'm fine with the concept of a separate layer for these widgets, it helps to avoid clutter, and the best about it: the widgets don't suck as much CPU power as Konfabulator

6. | Reply mike3k
   Posted 02 May 2005 at 4:24pm #
   

   I love it. I prefer it to Konfabulator and similar things because the widgets stay out of my way until I need them instead of taking up screen space all the time.

7. | Reply Bud Landry
   Posted 02 May 2005 at 11:26pm #
   

   Do they really stay out of the way all of the time? I mean, aren't they taking up memory, loading at startup that way? (not that multitasking and memory management is a problem at all with tiger.

   It is great to have a dictionary (or wikipedia) available that quick... no standalone app has been able to do that. I just wish there were more that were valuable offline as well.

   As far as the dash. I certainly don't want them all coming up each time. A handful will be used most of the time, and some, rarely at all, but you would want to know where they are.

8. | Reply Geoff
   Posted 03 May 2005 at 10:56am #
   

   Just came across a link to this in del.icio.us

   Amnesty Widget Browser is a utility for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that allows Dashboard widgets to live directly on your Desktop via a convenient icon in your system menu bar.

   Widgets loaded in Amnesty Widget Browser run completely independent of Apple's Dashboard environment, maintain their own preferences and feature additional properties such as window depth and opacity.

   http://www.mesadynamics.com/amnesty.htm

9. | Reply jjoo
   Posted 04 May 2005 at 7:01pm #
   

   Why not use devmode? Its more handy than something that sits in the status bar and uses up ram.

   As for being out of the way, they take up less memory/CPU/network resources when off the screen, so I guess they really are mre or less out of the way.