The Flip Side 3.28.07

The host welcomes listeners and thanks them for staying subscribed. He mentions that there is not much Mac-related widget news, but he will cover some Vista gadget news. He talks about the limitations and appearance of Vista gadgets, as well as the resources available for creating them. He then discusses a gift list widget he found, updates to the AppUpdate and WidgetUpdate widgets, and a review of the Easy Envelopes widget. He also mentions a $2,000 prize for the best Windows Vista gadget. The episode is kept short because there will be another podcast covering the basics of setting up a podcast widget using Dash Code. March 28th, 2007, Episode 27, Welcome to the Flipside with Jon Brown. Hi and welcome to the Flipside, I'm your host Jon Brown. I want to extend a very warm welcome to all you out there and also say thank you for staying subscribed. I know that this is not the most reliable podcast out on the net today, but I am trying my best to get these things out to you. Fortunately there hasn't been all that much Mac related widget news. Most of the widget news in there, out in the news today is Vista gadget related, which we will cover a bit of today. We'll also talk about the next installment of our Dash Go tutorial series, which is going to be the podcast widget. So we're going to talk about that. A whole lot of updates to widgets that we featured on the show a while back, so we're going to talk about those. And then a few rumors about Mac OS X Leopard and the dashboard environment. So let's just jump right in and get started. Now I know we don't like it, but Vista is out there and it's running wild with these wonderful things called gadgets, not related to anything whatsoever to widgets at all. But anyway, they're there and so they're worth talking about at least once. So today's show we're going to be talking about gadgets and a few resources out there for the Mac user who might consider making gadgets on their own for Vista. So let's face it, if we have a widget that we all love, wouldn't it be great to port that over to Vista? Or wouldn't it be interesting to port some Vista gadgets over to the Mac OS X platform? Okay, now I had a chance to sit down and try Vista and use the gadgets, and here are some of my opinions and thoughts on Vista gadgets. The Vista gadgets sidebar seems very limited. It only allows for about five to eight gadgets to be shown at one time in the sidebar. If you'd like to show more on the desktop, that's fine. Just pull them out and drag them on top of the desktop, which is a feature that I think we're going to be all glad to see in Leopard. Now with gadgets also, the appearance of the gadgets are very, very, very Windows-like. Instead of having the gadgets flip around like widgets do, which they probably couldn't do anyway, they just get larger, the gadget itself minimizes, and a window appears for the options. This is very similar to the Yahoo widget engine, if you're familiar with that. Also, the markup of these gadgets is XML-based, which is also very similar to the widget Yahoo engine, and uses its own tags and calls to make these function. So a lot of normal HTML and JavaScript will still work, but you have to change those tags a little bit to make them work. So in my opinion, it's a great addition for the Windows users. It's built right into the operating system, which is nice. They don't look all that bad. You can hide them. You don't have to use them at all. You can disable them again, just like in a Mac OS X. The only drawback that I find is that, again, the tray seems very limited. It is on the same level as the desktop, whereas the dashboard is on a totally separate layer, and you can show it and hide it with a hotkey combination. So again, those are my comments, and I really hope that you guys will give me your two cents on Microsoft gadgets, good or bad. You can send me audio comments to widgetshow at gmail.com, or you can catch me on Skype at TheFlipside, and of course you can post a comment on the show blog or on our forum at www.widgetshow.com. The last thing I want to say about Microsoft gadgets is this. We do have quite a lot of resources online, and we will have links to those resources in the show notes, video tutorials, and guides that go into how to code gadgets and whatnot. So if you're interested, again, in creating a Microsoft-istic gadget, or even trying to port over your widget to a gadget, then you can check out those resources, and again, those will be in the show notes. I was browsing Apple's widget repository when I stumbled upon a widget that just took my breath away. A very cool, very sleek, very stylish, and highly functional widget called the GiftIt widget, which allows you to create your own personalized gift list with images, prices, and the whole nine yards. It's very cool. It's very elegant. The design, everything follows the form follows function in that sense. It's quite large, but again, I think it's a really nice widget, especially if you have a larger screen anyway. I usually do the podcast on my 12-inch iBook, and it's quite large, but again, the larger the screen you have, the better it looks. It's a really cool widget. It's called the GiftIt widget, and there will be a link and information about that widget in the show notes. Two of my most favorite widgets have just been updated, and you probably have them already, but if not, it's well worth mentioning. The AppUpdate widget and the WidgetUpdate widget have been updated, and they've been updated to support Leopard 10.5. If you haven't had a chance to go and get those, the information for that will be in the show notes. They're also posted over at DashboardWidgets.com, and again, the Apple Download Dashboard widget page. Now, the coolest thing about these two widgets is that it helps keep your Mac up to date with software, but just keep in mind that a lot of the software that is being updated lately is betaware. So if you're not comfortable having a beta version of the next product on your system, then keep that in mind. But again, AppUpdate, WidgetUpdate, both featured here on the show. Before, go ahead and get those and check them out. The last widget that I'm going to be reviewing today is the Easy Envelopes widget by Ambrosia, and it's a really cool widget. One of our very first interviews was with Ambrosia. Very great company, very nice people, and just an amazing widget. They've added Leopard support. They've added a prettier notification for directions regarding two-sided printing, fixed an issue where a recent searches menu wouldn't be displayed when a dashboard is hidden, and then redisplayed, fixed a printing issue with the United States Postal Service barcode, fixed an issue where editing your address book entry wouldn't be reflected in the widget if the widget was already running, and various other bug fixes and enhancements. So again, that is the Easy Envelopes widget, really cool, by Ambrosia Software. Check it out. There will be a link in the show notes. The last thing in widget-related news is a $2,000 prize for the best Windows Vista gadget, so wouldn't it be cool if a gadget that was created, ported over from the Mac OS X side was one of the winners? I just think that would be awesome, but again, I'm putting that out there. If anyone is interested in winning up to $2,000, it's a great opportunity and a very good design incentive. We're going to keep it a little bit short today. That's the reason why is because we're going to be coming out with another podcast in just a few minutes, a video podcast covering the basics of setting up your first podcast widget using Dash Code. So I hope you'll all stick around for that. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at widgetshow at gmail.com. You can also check out the forum at forum.widgetshow.com. You can even check out all the show notes at www.widgetshow.com. Thanks for downloading and listening, and I hope you guys all enjoyed it. I'll catch you all next time on the flip side. Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com