When I first heard of Dashboard in upcoming Tiger Mac OS X, my initial thought was meh, not for me but I was wrong. 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 silly. Read this well-written article from Daring Fireball. He explained why better than anyone can.
If you’re a developer looking to build some decent, full-featured widgets such as Dictionary, etc., send me an email! I’m 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.
Dashboard 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).
I want that stock ticker!
Hey 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 ;)
Jasper, 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.
Proven 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.
No 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 >:))