Dashboard
Dashboard widgets running under Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger.
Developer:	Apple Inc.
Latest release:	1.0 / April 29, 2005
OS:	Mac OS X v10.4
Genre:	Widget engine
Website:	Apple.com

Dashboard is an application for Apple's Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger operating system, used for hosting mini-applications known as widgets. It is a semi-transparent layer that is invisible to the user unless activated by a hotkey, which can be set to the user's preference.

When Dashboard is activated, the user's desktop is dimmed and widgets fade into the foreground. Like application windows, they can be moved around, rearranged, deleted, and recreated (so that more than one of the same Widget is open at the same time, possibly with different settings). New widgets can be opened, via a menu bar, by dragging their icon out into the layer. After loading, the widget is ready for use.

Creation of widgets

Dashboard widgets are created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. Because the same programming languages are used for creating websites, many web developers can already build them. Widgets themselves are, at the core, simply HTML files that are displayed within the Dashboard layer; they use the WebKit application framework that is also used in Apple's Safari web browser, meaning even users running earlier versions of Mac OS X- where Dashboard is unavailable- can build them.

When a Dashboard widget is built, it usually consists of six files:

• The widget's HTML file, which is the actual file that will be displayed in the Dashboard layer
• The widget's CSS file, which is used for styling the widget (but is called on from the HTML file)
• The widget's JavaScript file, although it may be implemented directly within the HTML file if the developer desires
• The widget's Property List (called “Info.plist”), which is what Dashboard uses to load the widget’s properties (i.e.: name, version, HTML file, etc.)
• The background image of the widget, in PNG format
• The icon that is displayed in the menu bar

Once all of these files are in the root of a directory, it is given a name and the extension ".wdgt", and then it can be opened up in Dashboard as a widget. More complex widgets may also include a Cocoa widget plugin (for platform-specific functionality), one or more JavaScript files (for text scrolling, preferences, etc.) or multiple images (for personalized select menus or buttons).

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple's next operating system, will include an application called Dashcode, which is a more user-friendly way of creating widgets. Another new feature of Mac OS X Leopard is called "WebClip" which lets users easily create widgets from parts of a webpage. During the WWDC 2007 keynote, Steve Jobs made widgets out of the following: the features news headlines on Yahoo.com, the top ten most searched terms on Google, the Photo of the Day on National Geographic, some comic strips, and the box office information from Rotten Tomatoes. You can also customize the border to further personalize the widgets.

Widget functions and capabilities

Dashboard widgets, like web pages, are capable of many different things, oftentimes to perform tasks that would be tedious or complicated for the user to access manually. One example is the Google Search widget, which simply opens up the user's browser and performs a Google search. Other widgets, like Wikipedia, grab the contents of webpages and display them within Dashboard. Some widgets can also serve as games, using Adobe Flash (or another multimedia authoring program) to create games just as if they were in a browser.

Graphics

With the click of the mouse or the press of a hotkey, the Dashboard is activated and the Widgets "fly" onscreen. They disappear in a similar way.

Dashboard uses a variety of graphical effects for displaying, opening, and using widgets. For instance, a 3-D flip effect is used to simulate the widget flipping around (where a user may change the preferences); other effects include cross-fades from icon to body (when opening widgets), or a suck-in effect when they are closed. On sufficiently powered Macs, widgets will produce a ripple effect when they are opened, like a leaf falling onto water. Some users^{[attribution needed]} believe that these effects are taxing and superfluous, consuming CPU resources, but with the help of OS X’s Quartz Extreme and Core Image graphics architectures, sufficient computing power to render them in real time is available. As with Exposé, Front Row and the minimise effect, holding shift down while calling the Dashboard or opening the Dashboard menu bar will display the effect in slow motion.

Dashboard vs. Konfabulator

Many people have made comparisons between Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard, especially after Apple announced the feature while Mac OS X v10.4 was in development. It was a subject of debate on the online community following the few months before Mac OS X Tiger's official release.

One school of thought came to the conclusion that Dashboard was a "rip-off" of Konfabulator. They point out the visual and functional similarities between Dashboard and Konfabulator, and the fact that both programs used the term "widgets" to describe the applications they ran. Indeed, Apple was using the term "gadgets" to describe the widgets Dashboard ran before switching to "widgets" during the course of Mac OS X Tiger's development for unknown reasons, and that both have widgets that used several modern Internet technologies.

An opposing group claims that the idea of Konfabulator was actually not new. They point to Desk Accessories, a feature found in early Apple Macintosh operating systems in 1984. Desk Accessories, were small mini-applications that operated on a user’s desktop. After the introduction of System 7 and cooperative multitasking the necessity of creating Desk Accessories was removed and developers were encouraged to create applications instead. The OS continued to support them, for backward compatibility, until the switch to Mac OS X (In fact, the Calculator desk accessory remained in the Mac OS through version 9, 17 years without a significant update). They point out that many of the functions the original Desk Accessories had were similar to what Konfabulator provided (or could provide). Among them were things such as a calculator and a clock. Some even draw the conclusion that Konfabulator is ripping off Apple, and not the other way around.

Both claims were refuted by the article, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger by John Siracusa. The author of the article points out that none of the Konfabulator developers hold any patents on Konfabulator's implementation. Neither was the idea of an "accessory" application; it had been around for quite some time and has taken on several forms, from the widgets discussed here to full-fledged software applications.

Also, despite the similarities, there are some underlying differences between both programs. The widget engine is different; Konfabulator Widgets use XML and JavaScript. However, Dashboard widgets use HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) along with JavaScript, and can display themselves in the Safari web browser as if they were web pages. The operation of widgets in both environments is also different; Konfabulator Widgets can be set to be visible on the desktop, as well as to appear only when Konsposé is activated. Also, Konfabulator Widget preferences are usually set using a dialog box, accessible by bringing up the context menu of each Widget. However, Dashboard widgets cannot normally stay on the desktop, and the preferences of each widget is set by "flipping" over the widgets and setting any options on the "back" of the widget itself.

The code bases for Konfabulator and Dashboard are also different: whereas Konfabulator uses XML and JavaScript to generate Widgets, Dashboard uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Objective C.

Included widgets

At first, Apple included 14 widgets with Mac OS X v10.4 - v10.4.3. They consisted of:

• Address Book
• Business
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Dictionary
• Flight Tracker
• iTunes Controller
• Phone Book
• Stickies
• Stocks
• Tile Game
• Translation
• Unit Converter
• Weather
• World Clock

After the Macworld 2006 keynote, however, Steve Jobs also announced four new widgets (Ski Report, People Finder, Google Search, and ESPN), as well as significant updates to the Phone Book and Calendar widgets. All of these are available through the Mac OS X v10.4.4 update.

In addition, the upcoming version of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will include new widgets. One of these is WebClip, which will allow any user to turn a rectangular section of any webpage into a widget. The widget updates as the website does, and all links and other interactive material in the widget's selection of the webpage works as if the website is being accessed from Safari.

Apple also highly encourages developers to build their own widgets; many Dashboard-related sites provide downloads to collections of different widgets. Currently, Apple’s own Dashboard page and DashboardWidgets.com are the most popular. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will also include Dashcode, an application for the easy creation of widgets.

Images from included widgets

Dashboard's widget manager	Address Book	Business	Calculator
Calendar	Dictionary	ESPN	Flight Tracker
Google	iTunes	People	Ski Report
Stickies	Stocks	Tile Game	Translation
Unit Converter	Weather	World Clock

Widgets on the desktop

Although by default widgets are confined to the Dashboard layer, a widget can be dragged to the desktop by selecting the widget in the Dashboard shelf, dragging it, and then switching back to the desktop, from the Dashboard, before dropping the widget. (By default this is accomplished by pressing F12 on the keyboard to switch from desktop to Dashboard.) The widget will remain floating on the desktop until the next time the Dashboard is opened.

To keep one or more widgets on the desktop in a more permanent fashion, the Dashboard "devmode" must be activated. Enter the following into the Terminal, or Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app):

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

and then restart the Dock (and Dashboard):

killall Dock

After the devmode has been set, widgets dragged from the Dashboard will remain floating on the desktop, even after log out or shutdown. To move a desktop widget back to the Dashboard, simply reverse the process used to move it onto the desktop.

Another option is to use Amnesty Singles or Amnesty Widget Browser, shareware utilities that also allow the user to select which level (desktop, standard or floating) a widget occupies while it resides on the desktop.

See also

• Comparison of widget engines
• Dashboard (business)
• Screenlets - Dashboard like widget for linux.

References

• "Desk Ornaments" by Andy Hertzfeld, folklore.org, October, 1981, retrieved July 11, 2006

External links

• Apple's Dashboard page
• Apple's Dashboard Developer page
• Apple's Dashboard video
• Apple's Dashboard widget download page

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