The Dashboard is one of the biggest features of Mac OS X Tiger. Justin Williams covers what the Dashboard is, why its useful and how Mac users can take advantage of this awesome new technology.
With Mac OS X 10.4 Apple introduced Dashboard, a free-form overlay on your Mac desktop that lets you display small programs called Widgets. Widgets can perform a number of tasks, from checking the weather and time in Beijing to tracking packages and what’s on TV that night.
Widgets have been a part of the Mac experience before. When the original Macintosh was released in 1984, it included Desk Accessories. Since the early Macintosh had no support for multi-tasking, so these accessories provided a workaround. Desk Accessories were built as device drivers so that they could run at the same time as your open application. When System 7 was introduced in the early 1990s it introduced multi-tasking to the Mac platform and rendered Desk Accessories obsolete. Support remained in the operating system through OS 9, but they were not touted as a feature.
Now with Mac OS X Tiger, Desk Accessories have returned in a new form. Unlike their predecessor, Widgets are not device drivers. Instead, they are small Web applications comprised of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and graphics. The engine behind Widgets is the same as the Safari Web browser. This not only makes development more accessible, but also makes Widgets less prone to causing your Mac to behave erratically. Widgets are contained inside the Dashboard client application, so at most only a single instance of a Widget can crash rather than bring down the entire system.
When you add a new Widget to your desktop, it spawns a new process on your system. Some Widgets will take up more system resources than others. For example, the Clock Widget bundled with Tiger takes up less CPU time and system memory than the Radar In Motion widget since it takes much less effort to run a clock than shift a weather map. Because of this contrast, if you notice your system is running sluggishly, it may be because you have too many Widgets. The more memory you have in your Mac, the better off you will be.
Mac OS X Tiger bundles several Widgets with the operating system. A few of the highlights are:
- The Clock lets you have an analog clock with the time of any area in the world. If you have a desire to know what time it is in London at all times, now you can.
- My favorite Widget by far is Weather. Weather shows you the current conditions and gives a 5-day forecast. The Widget is powered by AccuWeather.com.
- Phone Book lets you search the Yellow Pages for business addresses and phone numbers.
- If you want to know how to say “I Love MacZealots” in Chinese, French or many other languages, the Translator will make it happen.
- Like its native application sibling, the Stickies Widget lets you put colored notes all over your desktop.
The real beauty of Dashboard comes with the third-party Widgets available. Developers around the world have put countless hours into making some very useful utilities for Mac users. During Steve Jobs’ WWDC 2005 Keynote, he outlined several of these third-party Widgets. They included:
- Sean Billig’s Wikipedia Widget that lets you search the Wikipedia encyclopedia. If you don’t know, Wikipedia is a 100% free, 100% user-contributed encyclopedia that covers over 500,000 topics.
- Package Tracker from Monkey Business Labs lets you track package shipments from UPS, FedEx, and DHL.
- Rabbit Radio lets you listen to NPR stations from around the country from Dashboard. Designed to look like an old-time radio, you can pick your station based on geographic location.
- The Countdown Widget from C3 Images lets you track how long it is until Longhorn ships or any other date you choose!
These are just a small sample of the Widgets available for Tiger. To find others, there are two great sites available to Dashboard users. The first is Apple’s official Dashboard listing. At the Apple site, you can find a listing of the top 50 Widgets based on the number of downloads, a listing of the latest Widgets added to the database, and a Finder-like Widget browser. The Widget browser is similar to the Finder’s column view. On the far left is a listing of general categories. Upon selecting a category, you will get a full listing of all Widgets available. The final column gives a screenshot, description and download link. Very slick.
The Apple page has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to so that you will be automatically notified of recently added Widgets. You can subscribe to that feed by clicking here.
The best third-party site is DashboardWidgets.com. DashboardWidgets.com has a listing of available Widgets just like Apple’s site, but allows for user comments and ratings for Widgets similar to MacUpdate. The site also has the latest news pertaining to Widgets, as well as user forums for Dashboard users and developers. Like Apple, there is an RSS feed available for DashboardWidgets.com too. You can also subscribe to their feed.
Another Dashboard site worth mentioning is WidgetMachine.com. One their Web site, you can mouseover a widget for quick information, or click on a widget to get even more information and options to download or add to a Widget their shopping cart. We found their site cumbersome to use at times, but despite the usabability the design gleams with magnificent Dashboard-like graphics and neat JavaScript animations — if only they had an RSS feed we could find.
Installing and Removing Widgets
Once you find Widgets you want to install, the installation process is simple. If you are using Safari, the installation is automatic. Upon clicking a download link for a new Widget, Safari will download the Widget and move it to the Widgets folder under your home directory’s Library folder. If you are using another browser such as Firefox or Camino, you can install Widgets by manually dragging them to the ~/Library/Widgets/ folder.
Uninstalling Widgets is not so simple. To remove a Widget, you have to go to the ~/Library/Widgets folder and drag the Widget to the trash. This will remove it from the listing of Widgets available. Alternatively, you can use a third-party utility like Widget Manager that lives in your System Preferences. From it, you can disable a Widget so that it no longer shows up in the Dashboard listing or completely remove it from your system. This is functionality that should have been put into Tiger from the start.
When new versions of your Widgets are released, the newer version should automatically overwrite your previous version. In some instances, however, you may have to remove the Widget from your Dashboard and drag a fresh version to it.
Tips & Tricks
Besides Widget Manager, there are several other utilities that can enhance your Dashboard experience. One of those is Dasher. One of the problems with the Dashboard is that it does not refresh Widgets in the background. For example, if you want to know the current temperature outside, you will have to wait a few seconds for the Weather widget to update with the latest data. Dasher helps to alleviate this. Upon installing in your System Preferences, you can set a specified interval for the Dashboard to launch.
This is also beneficial for those that don’t like screen savers. If you step away from your desk for a few minutes, when you return you will have all of your Widgets right in front of you to observe.
If you have nothing but disdain for the Dashboard, you can disable it entirely using DashOnOff. Another preference pane, DashOnOff lets you easily enable or disable the Dashboard. I tend to disable the Dashboard on slower Macs like my G4 Cube. System resources are scarce, and I don’t want several Widgets running in the background eating that precious memory.
For Dashboard developers, there is a new project that is just starting up called Wcode. Developed by Bryan Goldstein, Wcode integrates all portions of Widget development into a single window. The application is very rough at the moment, but I am discussing it here in hopes of it showing more promise in the future. Presently, most of the functionality of Wcode can be emulated in a text editor like TextMate.
Besides third-party utilities there are a few keyboard shortcuts beyond F12 that can make using the Dashboard a more pleasant experience. To close a Widget immediately, hover the mouse cursor over any running widget and press the Option key. This will bring up the small X in the top left corner so you can remove the Widget. You can also toggle the Widget Bar with Command-= (equal sign). Finally, to refresh the front most widget, use Command-R (just like Safari).
Widget Development
If you want to develop Dashboard Widgets, there are a few things to do to get started. First, you are going to need a good understanding of HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript at a minimum. If you want to extend your Widgets with plug-ins, a knowledge of Objective-C is also beneficial. If you aren’t comfortable with those technologies, hold off on developing Widgets and learn to make basic Web pages first.
Apple has posted several documents to their Apple Developer Connection Web site that cover Dashboard programming. The first you will want to read is Developing Dashboard Widgets. This article gives a broad overview of the technology that powers the Dashboard. After that, you should glance over the Dashboard Programming Guide. This is more in-depth discussion of the technology behind Dashboard.
As a fellow Dashboard user and developer, I implore you to pay special attention to the Design Conventions. In its early stage, I have seen far too many ugly Widgets that I am too ashamed to have on my system. Even if you have the most awesome functionality of any Widget available, if you have a bad user interface, people will not use it.
Other articles available from Apple include the Dashboard Reference and a technical note on debugging Widgets.
O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter has published two excellent tutorials on Widget development as well. In Build A Dashboard Widget, Andrew Anderson covers the basic foundation of a Dashboard Widget. In his second article, lets Build Another Dashboard Widget, Anderson shows you how to build a spelling suggestion Widget that interacts with the Google API.
Wrappping It Up
The Dashboard is still in its infancy. In Mac OS X Leopard I hope that Apple will add Widget management of some type. Telling novice users to go download a third-party utility or navigate to a folder in the Library folder to remove Widgets needs to be changed. I’d also like a better solution for the Widget Bar. Search would be nice. If you have a lot of Widgets, it is frustrating to scroll through page after page of them to find the one you want. Being able to categorize Widgets would be nice as well.
I’d also like for Apple to integrate Dashboard development into Xcode. If this is a development platform, then Apple should have an IDE for it. This could be solved by a great third-party IDE, but presently there isn’t one.
If you have a favorite Dashboard Widget I didn’t mention, leave a comment telling readers about it.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (10)
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed below are those of their authors and not necessarily endorsed or supported by MacZealots.com. In all cases, the comments provided here are offered as a courtesy and will be moderated. Any content deemed off-topic or offensive will be removed without notice. Posting a comment here boils down to two things: 1.) Think before you type 2.) Respect the thoughts of others. See our commenting guidelines and/or privacy policy for more information.
#1) On June 16, 2005 8:00 PM
If only widgets used less RAM - I know 20Mb each isn’t huge, but when you’ve got ten of them, I know I’d much rather Photoshop had the memory than the Dashboard…
#2) On June 16, 2005 9:59 PM
You can just hit Command+R to reload a widget..
#3) On June 16, 2005 10:20 PM
Did you not read the article? I mentioned that. :-P
#4) On June 17, 2005 10:33 AM
I just don’t get it. What do Widgets give me that an open program sitting in the Dock doesn’t? Other than to look at them when I first installed Tiger, they have been a big non-issue.
#5) On June 19, 2005 12:24 PM
…. Many don’t want to leave 4+ APPLICATIONS (programs are on Windows) sitting in their Dock taking up space and running when they can whisk it in and out at a whim. Just because you miss the utility and like clutter doesn’t mean we all do. Dashboard Widgets are also meant to be single-serve, single-function utilities… applications often have many different tasks they perform and take more effort as well. Let’s try to be informed before we are stupid, mmmkay?
#6) On June 20, 2005 11:04 AM
I have to say that the anonymous coward in this case is the type of Apple user that gives the company a bad name. There are a few things that came to mind while reading his comment-ramblings: (a) Trendy, (b) Opinion before thought, © Uninformed.
Instead of pretending to be the end-all knowledge base for Apple, how about offering some constructive feedback, mmmkay? The word “program” has been used by Apple since before Windows even existed. If I had to guess, you are one of those guys who is upset because of Apple’s switch to Intel? You probably even believe the benchmarks posted on Apple’s website and are now wondering why they would switch to a “slower” platform. :) Cheers to you, Anonymous Coward.
#7) On June 21, 2005 9:40 PM
i accientally junked weather.wdgt and do not want to re-install the entire system just to get it. does weather.wdgt exist as a standalone download anywhere on the web? can anyone suggest the best way to quickly obtain a copy of weather.wdgt?
#8) On June 22, 2005 12:54 AM
Anyone solved the problem of the sluggish iTunes widget? It’s definitely the widget I’d like to use most, but there’s literally a 4 second lag when I want to change tracks. This behavior is well documented on the Web but I haven’t found a solution.
Google for ‘slow iTunes widget’ to see what I mean..
#9) On June 22, 2005 5:36 PM
Just a pointer to further info on Widgets: www.web-graphics.com
#10) On June 27, 2005 5:23 PM
This preference pane from Ego Systems allows you to do all of the stuff Widget Manager (mentioned above) does as well as disable Dashboard entirely (like DashOnOff). Thus, only one preference pane. I wonder how 10.4.2’s widget manager will compare to this one. I suspect I will keep the one from Ego Systems.