The Flip Side 9.28.06

The host discusses the previous episode and encourages listeners to check out tutorials on Widget.System and JavaScript Arrays. They also mention a forum where users can ask questions and receive advice. The host then talks about drag-and-drop functionality in widgets and a pirate translator widget. They mention Google's creation of gadgets and widgets and discuss a way to close widgets in developer mode. The host also highlights the On Tour widget, which provides concert listings based on the music in a user's iTunes library. They invite listeners to submit their own widgets for review. The episode concludes with an interview with the creator of the Gas widget. September 28th, 2006, Episode 20, Welcome to the Flipside with John Brown. Hi and welcome to the Flipside. I'm your host, John Brown, and I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the last episode really quick before we jump into today's episode. Last episode, if you guys haven't had a chance to download and listen, it was a tutorial written by Andrew Hedges that went over Widget.System. It's a really great tutorial. It's up at WidgetShow.com. Head over there, comment on it, learn from it, and post your own comments and let us know what you think we should do for more tutorials. Or post comments and tell us what we can do more with the Widget.System. Also, there's a tutorial about JavaScript Arrays, which has been put up by TacoWidgets.com. It's a really great widget, I'm sorry, really great tutorial that goes over how to use arrays in your widget. If you're interested in using JavaScript Arrays in your widget, in dynamic aspects of JavaScript Arrays, then this is the tutorial for you. It walks you through step-by-step from the very beginning foundations of JavaScript Arrays all the way up through to dynamic multiple content JavaScript Arrays. So again, both of those tutorials can be found at WidgetShow.com. And a big thank you both to TacoWidgets.com and to Andrew Hedges for helping out the show and for putting out some really great tutorials. If you have an idea for a tutorial and you have the ability to make a tutorial and you want to share it on our website WidgetShow.com, please do not hesitate to talk to me. My email address is WidgetShow at gmail.com. If you have any ideas for tutorials that we can continue to create, please also email them to me at WidgetShow at gmail.com. Before we jump into the news and other widgets that I found to be interesting, I would like to point you guys out to the fact that our website WidgetShow.com also has a forum. So forum.widgetshow.com. And there are some people that are actually posting questions and need advice over at the forum. So if you can answer any of the questions out there, that would be great. Right now, I'm the only one that's really active in the forum and answering. And I would like to see more of you guys out there helping out these beginner widget developers. So if you can help out, that's great. It's a free sign up. Just go to forum.widgetshow.com and help out this community of beginner widget developers because they really have really important questions that need answering. And I don't want to be the one to monopolize the boards. And not all of my answers are 100% correct. I'm not a professional, but I would consider a professional JavaScripter or a professional graphic designer by any means. I do know a little bit about widgets because I've been making them for so long. But if anyone else could share their expertise, that would be great. We have over 70 subscribers at the moment. So if we all pitched in and helped out, that would be just tremendous. Again, head over to forum.widgetshow.com. Get an account. Become an active member of our forums. Also, for those of you who are wanting to post to the forum, it's a great resource for those of you who have questions so that we can start helping each other. Also, another great site, I'm sure you guys know, dashboardwidgets.com. We talked about them earlier on the show. So again, both forums are great, dashboardwidgets.com, forum.widgetshow.com. Head over there and become an active part of user discussions in the widget world. All right. Well, that's enough business. Let's get into some of the things that we want to talk about today. First thing I wanted to mention is a feature in the dashboard that is available to many widgets. So if you're going to be developing a widget and you want to add this feature, it's definitely there. And if you want to use this feature in current widgets that use this technology, it is also there also. So what I'm talking about is drag-and-drop. Now, there's two different kinds of drag-and-drop. Drag-and-drop, meaning moving an element of a widget in the dashboard into a different place in the same widget. That is considered drag-and-drop. And also dragging information from the desktop or any folder from your computer onto the widget from the dashboard. So basically, how would you do that? How would you actually drag a file from your desktop onto a widget in the dashboard? Very simply, click on the widget on the desktop, press the F12 key or whatever key you use to activate the dashboard. The file will stick to your cursor and stay on it. Do not release the mouse button. Move your mouse arrow over the widget that you want to drop it onto and let go. The file will then drop onto the widget, activating whatever the widget does. So if it's a file uploader, it will upload the file. If it's a picture viewer, then it will view the picture. So again, very easy and quick way to do drag-and-drop with widgets that already have that functionality. And there's also a separate class for drag-and-drop for those of you who want to add drag-and-drop functionality to widgets of your own. So again, there will be a link in the show notes to check out more information about drag-and-drop. But again, I just wanted to let you guys know in case you guys didn't. Alright, the next bit of news isn't really news, but it's a really kind of a cool and fun way to use the dashboard. The dashboard pirate translator has been created and it's a really great widget that is a fun way to waste some time. Simply type in some text, press translate, and it will automatically translate it into some pirate text. Really great widget. Again, there will be a link in the show notes. Check it out, download it, tell us your comments and opinions of the pirate translator. Okay, the next bit of news is about Google. Now Google is sort of jumping on the bandwagon and creating some of their own gadgets and widgets, if you will. So what they're doing is they created something called Google Desktop. So it's a really easy way for you to use gadgets on your website. If you have a Gmail website, you can add these widgets to your website and they have gadgets for your desktop. Now currently, they only have gadgets released on the PC side, but they look very similar to widgets that you would find in the Mac OS X dashboard. Very nice, very good service. And right now, Google already has several widgets available for the Mac OS X dashboard platform. And I wouldn't be surprised if later on down the line, Google developed some way of putting their gadgets or widgets onto a Mac OS X user's desktop. Google is trying to get into every aspect of our lives and this is just another way that they're doing a good job. So again, check out Google Desktop, available at desktop.google.com. Alright, so if you're like me and you use developer mode to troubleshoot your widgets, you might notice that two things. One, the widget is always floating over the top of your windows. And two, it's kind of difficult to close the widget without bringing it back into the dashboard environment. So if you want to close the widget without bringing the widget into the dashboard environment, here's how to do that. So enable developer mode and all you have to do is drag a widget to the desktop. Then hover your mouse over the widget while pressing Option and Shift. You must press both these keys at the same time, Option and Shift. A little X will appear on the top left corner of the widget. Click the X and you're done. So a very easy way to click and close the widget while it's on the desktop in developer mode. The last widget that I wanted to talk to you about today was the On Tour widget. Now the On Tour widget offers concert listings for your town. Concerts of artists in your iTunes will be highlighted in the My Artist section of results so that you can be sure to see them. It's a really great widget. We're going to be featuring it later on the show blog. There will be a link to it in the show notes. The website address is concerts.ontour.net. Again, a really great widget. It uses the music in your iTunes library from within Dashboard to track down exactly what concerts you want to see. All you have to do is type in the name of your artist that you want to see. It will show you the songs that you have in your iTunes through the Dashboard widget and will also show you the concert information. It's a really great, handy widget if you're into concerts and into doing all that stuff. So again, concerts.ontour.net. Now the people that created On Tour let us know about the widget by sending us an email through the website. So if you notice at the very bottom of the show blog, there's a little place that says, Submit your widget for review here. If you guys have a widget, you want to get it publicized for free, we don't charge anything at all. We'll put it on the blog. We'll do a little story about it, let people have exposure to it. We have quite a large audience in this podcast, 70 subscribers. So I really hope that everyone will, if you have a widget in development, you want to let us know about it, please do so. You can also do so on the show forum, which is forum.widgetshow.com. All right, so that's going to lead us right into today's interview. Now today we are talking with Eben Ellison, who is the creator of the Gas widget. Now ever since I've been using Dashboard interface on the Mac OS X experience, one of the widgets that has always amazed me was the Gas widget. This widget is super functional and for a quick and easy task that we all need to do on a daily basis. And it's finding reasonable or the cheapest gas price within a certain radius or zip code location. Now I've been using this widget for about a year and it's saved me lots of time, money, and frustration. I really love the simple interface and the super fast scrolling numbers when it refreshes. You know, when it searches for my widget, so I really love it. It's awesome. If you're like me, you want to save some cash as well as have a functional widget on your dashboard that does what it does, then this is the widget for you. You'll be instantly amazed. And not only that, but we've heard through the grapevine that Person 3.0 will be coming soon. It will have a lot of new features, so check that out also. So without further to do, let's talk to Evan Ellison, the creator of the Dashboard Gas widget. Hi, we're talking with Evan, the creator of the Gas widget. Hi Evan, how are you? Hello, great. How are you? Great. The first question we had for you is what inspired the Gas widget? It's been around for a long time and what was some of the main inspirations for it? Well, I guess the easiest answer is that it certainly is, especially with gas prices on the rise at the time. I believe actually the inspiration itself came from just a webpage online where people were tossing around ideas. And I have to admit that the idea was started by my co-developer. Okay. And I jumped on board when he needed some help with the graphics. And we just, from that point on, went forward with the co-developer. Cool. That's awesome. It's been a very successful widget and it's been around for a while. What challenges did you have, if any, while making this widget? Well, it started out rather simply and there have certainly been a lot of added features since then. Most of them are suggestions from users. And one of the biggest challenges was actually getting permission from Gas to query their database using the widget. But they were very helpful in providing us with some backdoor ways into their data. And now they're actually using us by giving us a few more things that made it easier to implement the new features that people have been asking for. Okay. So they actually worked with you to make your widget a little bit better. That's awesome. Cool. Yes, it's great. Yeah. How has the response been to the Gas widget so far? It's been very, very strong. It was at number one for a while on the Apple Downloads page. It's since bumped down the list quite a bit, but I think that's largely due to the limited number of updates that it's had over the past couple of years. But, yeah, the downloads are definitely in the high millions. Right. And it's been in the top 50 for, I think, the whole entire length of its existence, right? It has. Yeah. So that's very successful. And this is one of the first widgets I ever saw, and very clean, very well designed. And I really enjoyed the widget when I first started using the dashboard. Thank you. So what in your mind did you learn the most creating this widget, either graphically or coding-wise or anything? Oh, goodness. There are a lot of things to be learned. My second widget, actually, I made one for my own personal use, which was a manual page widget. This is the first one that really allowed me to get creative with the graphics. Okay. So that was a lot of fun, and it's still relatively simple. It's just some animated GIFs. Right. And it was really fun to be able to take, you know, an object from the physical world, try to, you know, tweak it so it looked like it fit on the dashboard with the traditional Apple dial. Right. And one of the other things that I learned a lot about was stability in the design. We spent a lot of time thinking about what needed to be seen immediately and what could be secondary information. And also, there's a lot of thought put into the keyboard mappings, so you can move up and down the list with the left and right keys, and you can also jump directly to stations by hitting the numbered keys as well. So there are a lot of subtle things that people might not actually notice at first, but if you might expect them to work like you do with most Apple products, they usually do. Right. Well, that is true. It's definitely a challenge with integrating a lot of those features into widgets, but I think that Apple makes it easy for us to use their different guidelines and everything. It's really nice. I like it. Cool. All right. And what advice would you give someone who wants to create a successful widget of their own? Well, I think the biggest bit of advice I could give is, you know, come up with an idea that's going to be universal, because there's certainly a lot of widgets out there, and many of them are very good, but some apply to, you know, everybody and perhaps their little niche audience. And I've tried pretty hard to come up with things that would be at least interesting to everybody out there. And it's been pretty successful so far. And apart from that, from a coding standpoint, is, you know, don't be overwhelmed too much. It's easy to get started and a little bit more difficult to master, but it's certainly got a nice, easy learning curve. Cool. All right. And where can people download and try out the GAS widget if they haven't already? It is available at apple.com. They can also download it directly from my site at interdimensionmedia.com. Okay. I think it's also floating around by a few others out there. And I guess additionally, I just want to comment that some people have been wondering where the next version is, because it has been a while. And I wanted to iterate to everyone that it is coming at some point in the near future. Since, as I mentioned, we've been working directly with Gas Price Watch to get some of the new features into the widget, there have been a couple snags at their ends, mostly that they've been too busy. But it's on the way, and we're really excited about some of the new features that are going to be in it. Look forward to it in the near future. Well, that's awesome. Well, thanks for giving us that little sneak peek. Other than the GAS widget, do you guys have any plans on creating any other widgets in the future? There certainly are some. They're all in the early stages of development. I actually want to get a few updates out for the ones that I have first. And then the next thing should be coming in a few months, I believe. All right. Well, that's great. Look forward to those new widgets. Also, update to the GAS widget. Evan, it was great talking with you. Yes, thank you. I just want to say thanks to Evan one more time. It was really great that we finally got connected and did the interview. Really great widget, the GAS widget. You can find that over at his website. There will be a link to it in the show notes. There's also a post on the show blog at WidgetShow.com. And please leave your comments for Evan, your comments about his widget right there on the show blog. And this has been a really great and successful widget, and we can all learn from each other. So let's all become part of this great community and collaborate together. All right. So that brings us to the end of the show. Again, thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. And thank you for becoming an active member in the widget community. If you have a widget for review, if you're a developer or designer, and you've designed something amazing, then tell us about it. Even if you're not a developer or designer, if you've made a widget, this is the best way to announce it to a large, broad audience on the air. So, again, if you have a widget, let us know about it, WidgetShow at gmail.com. Contribute to the show. If you have any ideas for tutorials that we can do on the show, please let us know. If you would like to do any reviews of any widgets for the show or anything that you would like to post on the show blog, send those to me at WidgetShow at gmail.com. We also have a hotline at 206-333-0417. That's 206-333-0417. And anything that you record will be automatically sent to me in mp3 format, and we can put that right to the show. So if you have a question or a comment, please feel free to send those to WidgetShow at gmail.com or call our hotline. We're also looking for staff writers. So if you really want to post some things to the blog about widgets or about designing widgets or about anything related to widgets with the dashboard, go ahead and contact me at WidgetShow at gmail.com. Also, and lastly, again, one more time, we have a forum. Head over to forum.widgetshow.com and become an active part of discussions on our forum. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you for subscribing and listening, and we'll catch you guys all next time on the flip side.