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[ANN] DashboardWidgets Launched

T

thePurpleGiant

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 5, 2004
19
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Many of you here know that I was the person behind The Dashboader, the first Dashboard-related website out there. Well now The Dashboarder has joined forces with DashboardDeveloper to launch a new website:



http://www.dashboardwidgets.com

DashboardWidgets is the result of merging the above two sites into a single Dashboard site, including Dashboard news & discussion, and of course, widgets! The site is growing rapidly as Tiger's release date nears, and right now we have a competition to win a Mac mini for developers who enter their widgets.
 
Hey, I didn't know you were the guy behind The Dashboarder! Anyway, love the original site, and I know Dashboard Widgets will be quite successful. Thanks!

BTW, it seems like the site's running really slow on my perfectly fine broadband connection. Will this improve?
-Chase
 
This is a great idea, and I wish you the best of luck.

One piece of feedback: the site is way too slow, and this is right now before Tiger is out.

If you are going to make a serious run at this, you're going to need to beef up the speed--servers, broadband, site coding--whatever is making it so slow right now.

Just some helpful advice. Good luck and thanks for doing this for the community. :)
 
Hey Purple Giant,

Good job on "The Dashboarder" site. That was one of my favorites. I used to just visit and look at the Widgets I could never get, like an art gallery. I checked out the new site, I agree it's really slow. I kept getting dropped when trying to connect, and it doesn't look right on Firefox.

The forums on the last site were also much better to read and look at. I think you should have consolidated on your old site, rather than the Developer page. But I look forward to the improvements.
 
Hi Black Rock,

Thanks for the suggestions. I agree the speed needs to be worked on, and it will be. Regarding the rendering in Firefox, other than the 'recent widgets' box, and a slightly longer navigation bar at the top, everything looks fine here to me. Are you able to clarify what isn't rendering correctly for you?

Keep checking back, as work is going on all the time. I'll see what can be done to make the forums more clear to read through.

Cheers :)
 
The Black Rock said:
I used to just visit and look at the Widgets I could never get, like an art gallery.
Click to expand...
Did you know that you can download widgets and preview them in your web browser? Widgets are .html files and run normally in internet browsers. The only thing you'll be missing before Tiger is the "F12" key screen overlay feature, the dashboard layout, the 3D eye candy that you will be able to experience and the OS integration. Besides this you will be able to run widgets normally.

By the way I liked thedashboarder's layout better than the new website you've joined. Also, why aren't there as many widgets on the new site compared to the old one and why have some been eliminated that were on the old site?
 
That is awesome! Thanks for sharing. I think Dashboard is going to be a great new feature to OS X. I'd like to start learning how to make widgets when Tiger is released. I just registered on the site.
 
GodBless said:
Also, why aren't there as many widgets on the new site compared to the old one and why have some been eliminated that were on the old site?
Click to expand...

The reason that not all of the widgets from The Dashboarder appear on DashboardWidgets is because many 'widgets' on The Dashboarder were actually made for very early builds of Tiger, with the extension '.gadget' These do not work on current builds, nor will they work on the Public Release of Tiger. It is up to the authors to update them, and resubmit - we'd love them to do this.

With the public release of Tiger seemingly not far away at all, I am certain you will see the number of widgets in our showcase increase dramatically after its launch.
 
thePurpleGiant said:
With the public release of Tiger seemingly not far away at all, I am certain you will see the number of widgets in our showcase increase dramatically after its launch.
Click to expand...

Good point. I hope so.
 
GodBless said:
Did you know that you can download widgets and preview them in your web browser? Widgets are .html files and run normally in internet browsers. The only thing you'll be missing before Tiger is the "F12" key screen overlay feature, the dashboard layout, the 3D eye candy that you will be able to experience and the OS integration. Besides this you will be able to run widgets normally.
Click to expand...

Actually, that isn't true. While you may be able to download the widgets, open them up, and look at the html file in Safari, it definitely isn't the same. For example, go here and look at what Apple provided to select widgets. Doesn't look right, uh? While you can get it semi-functioning (hover your mouse between the two black things and press "More" when it shows up), Dashboard requires a few extra things to make widgets work.
-Chase
 
rendezvouscp said:
Actually, that isn't true. While you may be able to download the widgets, open them up, and look at the html file in Safari, it definitely isn't the same. For example, go here and look at what Apple provided to select widgets. Doesn't look right, uh? While you can get it semi-functioning (hover your mouse between the two black things and press "More" when it shows up), Dashboard requires a few extra things to make widgets work.
-Chase
Click to expand...

We are approaching the 1 year checkpoint when the name "Gadgets" was changed to "Widgets". This web page's example that you have a link to is based off of a Tiger Build from about a year ago too. Newer builds have a new way of choosing Widgets from a Widgets dock.

If you read my previous post right and you read Apple's web pages on Tiger you will understand that widgets can be tested in a web browser because they are built with web kit and run off of .html files.

As I mentioned before I can confirm that the only thing you will be missing with Widgets before Tiger comes out is the way your computer displays them and the layout that your computer puts them in. The layout is what you linked me to so you aren't proving me wrong you are just confirming what I said in the first place.
 
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