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We all know that Apple Dashboard widgets give your Mac something of a heads-up display, combining multiple sources of information in a single at-a-glance interface. But while Apple introduced its desktop widget platform in 2005 as part of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), what you may not have realized is that the concept far predates even OS X, going way back to the dawn of the Macintosh itself.
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We all know that Apple Dashboard widgets give your Mac something of a heads-up display, combining multiple sources of information in a single at-a-glance interface. But while Apple introduced its desktop widget platform in 2005 as part of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), what you may not have realized is that the concept far predates even OS X, going way back to the dawn of the Macintosh itself.
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The main ideas from this information are: - The dictionary widget in OS X has cool tricks like showing possible completions and a list of related words. - Widgets may be available on the iPhone in the future. - A new web widget called My iTunes allows users to display their iTunes purchases, favorites, and reviews on their website. - iWeb now has web widgets for web galleries, maps, YouTube videos, and other code snippets. - The Final Storage widget helps calculate the required disk space for video files. - The Very Bad Poetry widget collects and shares terrible poems. - Apple Dashboard Widgets have been around for over 25 years, starting with Desk Ornaments on the Macintosh. - Dashboard widgets are built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images, and can utilize local computing resources and operating system commands. August 28, 2007, Episode 29, Welcome to the Flipside with John Brown. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Flipside. I'm your host, John Brown. We have a lot of great stuff to cover today, so let's just get started. The first thing I want to talk to you about today is the dictionary widget, which is built right into the OS X dashboard in Tiger. The dictionary widget has a lot of cool tricks that most people don't know about, so let's just get started. First, as with text in many OS X applications, you can get the search box to show you possible completions based on the characters that you've typed so far. It's a very cool trick. You go about doing it by pressing and holding the control option or command, and then press the escape key, and you'll see a drop-down list of possible completions. Scroll or arrow down to the word you'd like to use, press return, and the definition will appear. So again, this is a really cool trick. It uses the database for the dictionary that's built into the OS X. It's very unobtrusive, and it's a very handy trick. You can find more information about this trick over at Widgetshow.com. I've added more information about this trick in our post. Also, you can find a link to the source of this trick in our show notes. The other trick with the dictionary widget involves what you can do once you have a definition visible in the widget. Type rain, for instance, and you'll see that rain is moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops, and a very clear definition it is. But see the half circle with the R on it sticking out on the left edge of the widget? Well, click that, and you'll see a list of other known words and phrases that start with rain. Click any of those words to jump to their definition. Click the R again before clicking another word, and you'll switch back to the standard definition of rain. Again, another cool trick. Very interesting. Most people didn't pick this up until just a couple months ago. Again, we'll have a link to the source of this trick in our show notes. You can also toggle the widget from dictionary mode to thesaurus mode, and the same trick works. Here we'll show you a list of other words in the thesaurus that are similar to the chosen word. Toggle the R again, and you're back to the thesaurus for entries to rain. Also another little trick that a lot of other people have seen. It's not really a trick, but it's just kind of an interesting thing to see. If you go to the thesaurus section of the dashboard widget, the dictionary widget, and type in the word democracy, you'll see a very interesting description of the word democracy. It's interesting to see that Apple threw it in there. I'm not sure if it's Apple or if it's Merriam-Webster's. I'm not going to go into it here on the air, but again, it's a very interesting little trick. Tell us what you think. Next in the news, a dashboard icon has been found in an iPhone. When they were first making the iPhone, they did intend for widgets to work on the iPhone. I'm sure that they want widgets to work on the iPhone much better than just browsing to the widget and running through Safari, but actually being able to go to Apple's own website and download the widgets that we're all creating and have them run in a dashboard-like environment right there on the iPhone. It was verified by someone who's using the iPhontastic's file browser, and you actually can see an image which shows the dashboard icon, of course. This is just speculation, but I'm sure that in the future we will see actual widgets running on the iPhone. Until then, we're just going to have to wait and stick it out with these Ajax-powered web widgets that we're all getting used to running through the Safari browser on your iPhone. A new web widget was just rolled out, I'd say, about two weeks ago. It's the My iTunes web widget, and if you have an iTunes account, you can create one of these web widgets for your own website. The My iTunes is a feature you can access specifically by clicking on your user account. Activating it provides you with access to three different widgets, My iTunes Purchases, My iTunes Favorites, and My iTunes Reviews. It's a very interesting Flash-based widget, and I went ahead and created one and put it on Widgetshow.com so you can all see how it works. Again, you have to have an iTunes account, and it pulls all your information from your account and puts it in this widget. Now, a lot of people are speculating this is not a very good idea. A lot of people have things that they've purchased that they really don't want other people to see, or they have favorites in iTunes that they don't necessarily want to share with other people, and or they've written reviews that they don't really want other people to read. Maybe it was an unfavorable review. Who knows? But Apple is certainly making a bold move here by making these web widgets available, and I think it's just sort of a precursor of things to come. On that same note, there are even more web widgets in the new version of iWeb. I just recently got my hands on iWeb and iLife08, which is really cool, and I went into it just to play around, and there are several different web widgets that you can create. You can create a web gallery, web widget in iWeb, so if you went into iPhoto and you've created a web gallery, you can actually make a widget in iWeb that will link to your web gallery, which is kind of cool. Again, it's a Flash-based widget, which is what Apple seems to be using now, Flash. The next two widgets are for Maps and YouTube videos, so you can add your own YouTube videos or anything, actually, because the third one is an ability to add any kind of code snippet that you would get from any website that offers web widgets. Again, I went to the OS X website. A web widget is a snippet of live content on another website that you can add to your own blog or website. A growing number of sites offer embeddable web widgets, so if you see a YouTube video, stock ticker, weather report, or any other cool widget that you want to add to your website, iWeb now makes it easy. This is, again, an incentive for people to continue staying subscribed with their .Mac account. This is an incentive for people who have been using the iWeb suite and they want to continue using it. This is a great way that iWeb has integrated yet another form of widgets, which is just great. I wanted to share with you a widget that I have found really great. I would consider this the holy grail of widgets for video users. It is a really awesome widget. It is called Final Storage. The OS X widget calculates the required disk space of compressed video footage. You only need to enter the bit rate, length, and it will tell you exactly how much storage you need to make that great movie. Maybe you are using iMovie 08. Maybe you are using Final Cut Pro. The problem these days is that video files are getting very large, so you need to know exactly how much space you are going to need. This widget really does a great job of that. I actually just made a home movie in iMovie and it was great. I used the widget and I knew exactly how much storage space I needed to create this movie, which is just great. Again, this is the Final Storage and there is a link to this widget in the show notes. The next widget that I thought was kind of funny was the Very Bad Poetry widget. This widget has been around for a little while, but I just sort of discovered it. The Very Bad Poetry is a resource to collect and share some of the world's most overlooked poetry. To make this easier and awesomer, we have contacted Apple Dashboard Widget to keep you on top of the day's terrible poems. Again, a dashboard widget that is for fun, but it does provide a cultural service. Again, the Very Bad Poetry widget can be found at VeryBadPoetry.com. I just wanted to touch briefly on the history of widgets that have been out there. We all know that Apple Dashboard Widgets give your Mac something of a heads-up display, combining multiple sources of information in a single at-a-glance interface. While Apple introduced its desktop widget platform in 2005 as part of Mac OS X Tiger, you may not have realized that the concept far predates even OS X going back to the dawn of the Macintosh itself. Again, a lot of people don't really realize that the very first widgets were created over 25 years ago. Let me explain. If you go back into the history of Apple computers, you'll see that there were two people in 1991, Bud Trimble and Andy Hertzfield. They brainstormed something called Desk Ornaments, describing little miniature applications running in their own windows inside the old-school Macintosh operating system. These tiny tools extended the desktop experience beyond applications and their associated computing and screen real estate costs, placing small and undemanding tasks in the background for productivity and pleasure. So basically, these same ideals are what the current-day OS X dashboard are currently built on. Apple Dashboard Widgets often play the role of merging the desktop with the web, but to dig deeper, each widget runs inside of a protected web space built on top of the web core framework, essentially a miniature version of the Safari web browser. Dashboard widgets are built using some of the same technologies you'd find within most pages, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images. PNG images, of course, are preferred. Advanced widgets step beyond the browser and take advantage of the local computing resources and operating system commands. Your dashboard widgets might leverage your graphics processor using Corsix Extreme and check your current battery status or execute shell commands. As anyone who has ever used a widget before knows, their practical utility is near infinite. The ability to engage in an alternate display for glanceable personal and public information, accessible by a single hotkey, expertly merges utility with convenience, probably a lot like you. I have a lot of usual widgets checking the weather forecast, keeping track of package delivery statuses, and keeping me up to date with my favorite soccer teams, as well as a few business-minded ones checking my web server and database status, outstanding invoices, and project progress. A few changes that we may see in Leopard introduces some big and very welcome changes in widget composition and execution. New widgets will have access to all the latest technology available at the operating system level, as well as a few nifty tricks specific to widget authoring and consumption. Here are things that we can expect as Leopard comes closer. Web Clip Web Clip in Safari for Leopard adds widget authoring features directly to the browser, letting any user highlight the selection of a web page for display within a personal widget window. The Web Core rendering engine fetches the appropriate web page for each widget behind the scenes, displaying only the piece of the page you specify. So again, the Web Clip widget, we've all seen this demonstrated by Steve Jobs. This is going to be a really cool and welcome widget, and I'm sure that this will make making widgets from web pages very easy. .Mac Sync Most dashboard widgets store custom data such as your zip code, stock ticker symbols, or a favorite sports team. Dashboard for Leopard can synchronize and backup your widget preferences using a specialized keychain and your .Mac account. You no longer have to reconfigure your widget environment on multiple machines. So again, this is going to be a welcome change for all those who travel with a laptop, and they want to keep their desktop and laptop systems the same so that they don't have to keep changing the settings. Dash Code, which we've talked about very much in the past, is an integrated development environment designed specifically for dashboard widgets and its composite parts. The application builds on top of the Xcode interface with specializing authoring debugging tools for HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Quartz web feeds as well, such as RSS and Atom. Authors can customize pre-existing templates for their blog, podcast, or photo stream, or write their next widget from scratch in a well-tested environment. So Dashboard isn't the only desktop widget platform in town, but it's pretty clear just how robust it is compared to its competition. So again, here's just a little look at the different things that we've seen in the past. From 1981 to today, dashboard widgets have always been something that's been on the mind of developers at Apple, and I'm very happy that they've developed it this far. It's up to us as widget developers to take it to the next level, take it to the next step, and with access to more system functions and more system commands coming in the future with Leopard, I can only foresee that that is exactly what we're going to do, and I'm very excited to see that. The last piece of news that sort of slipped through the cracks is a dashboard patent for a cube-like interface. Filed February 1, 2006, almost two years ago, under the heading Multiple Dashboards, the 45-page patent application lists the Mac maker's vice president of platform experience, Scott Forstall, among the engineers credited with the proposed interface concepts. While the existing versions of Apple's OS X operating system offers a single repository and graphical interface view for managing dashboard widgets, Forstall's proposal would expand the concept to allow users to create and configure multiple dashboards used to manage their increasing number of widgets available for download across the Internet. For example, one dashboard could contain widgets related to work, while another would house those widgets related only to personal matters. So, again, we're seeing spaces sort of merged into dashboards, but we're getting a cube-like transition. It looks really cool. There was a widget that was created that does this very same thing, multi-dash, which is created by JBear Technologies, and you can find a link to that in the show notes, but it was a great widget that actually allowed you to save your widgets and different dashboards, but without the frill of a cool transition. I think that if this is a sign of things to come for Leopard, then we're all going to be happy and excited and welcome these new changes. I'm sure that that will be really great. So, again, dashboard patent, things to come in Leopard, I'm sure. All right, so the thing that I want to talk about last is I really wanted to get more comments and feedback from you guys. Tell us what your favorite widget is and why. We're going to be having a contest, and we have a prize valued at $25. Go ahead and leave us a comment on our website, and the best widget and why you will like that widget. The best answer will win a $25 prize. I'm not going to reveal what the prize is now, but it's valued at $25, and I'm sure that you will all enjoy this great prize. So, again, go online, hit the comments section of this podcast, go ahead and leave a comment. Tell us what your favorite widget is and why. Well, that's it. That's the end of the show. Thank you all for listening, and thank you all for staying subscribed. If you have a widget or if you're a widget developer or designer and you've developed or designed something amazing, then tell us about it. Even if you're not a designer or developer and if you've made a great widget, the best way to announce it is to tell us and have it on the show, and we'll review it right here in the flip side. We also have a great listener base that can help you improve your widget. Let us review it and get comments and feedback for you right here on the show. Contribute to the show. We need people to help out with the show. Review any of the products that we've reviewed here on the show and send your comments to widgetshowatgmail.com. To get your widget added to the podcast, please contact me at widgetshowatgmail.com also. The show's hotline is 206-333-0417. Again, that's 206-333-0417. If you would like to contribute to the show, please send your audio comments to widgetshowatgmail.com. We're still looking for people to write for the blog. If you have something to share with the widget community, then drop me a line at widgetshowatgmail.com and we'll post your thoughts on www.widgetshow.com. I'd like to thank everyone for, again, staying subscribed and listening. We'll catch you all next time on the flip side. Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com
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