July 01, 2004
Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4..
When I first heard of Dashboard in upcoming Tiger Mac OS X, my initial thought was meh, not another javascript gadgetry tools with steep learning curve.. but the more I learned about it, the less empty drool buckets I have left! It's amazing that any web designers / developers can easily develop a widget using just XHTML / CSS for interface. No Javascript or XML bullshits.
Look at the source code of Stickies widget for an example of how it's done. Here's a compressed version of the whole things including plists. (Thanks to Erik Veland for posting them)
I think comparing Dashboard to Konfabulator is a little ridiculous.. Instead of repeating what everyone is saying, I'll point you to this extremely well-written article by John Gruber
If you're a developer looking to build some decent, full-featured widgets such as Dictionary, etc., send me an email! I'm so itching to contribute some graphics.
that article is a very good read.
thank you for the link.
i can not wait to play with dashboard.
Posted by: mike cosentino at July 1, 2004 09:23 PMDashboard does look amazing. I can't wait to play around and see what I can do. I'd love to make a weather widget (if it's not gonna be included in the final release).
Posted by: Elliott Pogue at July 5, 2004 02:06 PMI want that stock ticker!
Posted by: Phillip Ryu at July 8, 2004 05:05 AMHey Adam and Phill, perhaps we could do some kind of Widget/Gadget contest at Macthemes, Or perhaps we could start a service for designing these widgets ;)
Posted by: Jasper Hauser at July 8, 2004 11:24 AMJasper, I was def. thinking about that... just a design contest. The problem would be getting a few coders who would be proficient / experienced enough to realize them. There aren't any proven gadget programmers yet, unfortunately, and I would hate for a great design to just lie around collecting dust.
Posted by: Phillip Ryu at July 9, 2004 07:04 PMProven gadget developers? What does that mean? What about the pool of thousands of web developers working on OS X? ;) Not that I'm contributing myself, I barely know enough JavaScript to pass by, but I think you'll have a lot more "proven gadget developers" than capable OS X themers.
Posted by: synotic at July 12, 2004 05:37 AMNo one I know on MacNN though. I know a few coders, but most aren't great in all aspects of widget coding, which would seem to include HTML, CSS, Javascript, and even Cocoa? Anyway, I tried to find people to code Konfabulator widgets previously, and failed miserably. You're right though, there's probably going to be many more gadget programmers. (And a lack of great designs >:))
Posted by: Phillip Ryu at July 13, 2004 03:46 PM
