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the NEW (and unofficial) Macrumors Widget

A

ashjamben

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2007
608
1
Shanghai, China
i thought that one may already exist, and in fact there is, but to me the ones i've seen are not very aesthetically pleasing and don't really keep with the macrumors theme colours.

i'd been wanting to try out dashcode for a while, so thought i'd make my own, for the page 1 rumors rss. heres a pic:

MacRumorsWidgetPreview.png


and if you want it (i'm hoping it may be popular enough to become the official macrumors widget :)) please let everyone else know about it

Download Here: 192KB (zipped)

i'd like any comments, ideas and constructive criticism. also, please let me know if you use this widget. i've only just started with dashcode and don't really know much about it, but i'll try my best to improve it. we're on v1.1 at the moment, and i hope i can keep this thing going.

thanks alot
ashjamben
 
Cool widget!

But for the love of whichever Supreme Deity happens to be listening, please tell me that 'Widget' is not written in Comic Sans.
 
SwiftLives said:
Cool widget!

But for the love of whichever Supreme Deity happens to be listening, please tell me that 'Widget' is not written in Comic Sans.
Click to expand...

ok ok, i apologise now. widget is indeed written in comic sans :(

i wanted it to stand out, and look different to the usual font. more curved and kinda scribbled if you like. i was rushing and picked the first one i could think of. maybe with some more suggestions i'll change it for v1.2 :D
 
It's okay, comic sans is a very awkward font you either love it or hate it. (I freaking hate it)

we have an exchange student at our school and he said it was his absolute favorite font. He wrote everything in comic sans, and our english teacher, without any warning took 10% off of one his papers for it. She threatened that the next time he handed in a paper written in comic sans she would throw up.

Point of the story is: comics sans is gross.

oh and nice widget.
 
I actually think the very horribleness of comic sans makes it work in this context - it's like a child has scrawled "widget" over it. The tacked-on-the-end-ness gives it a light-hearted feel and reminds you that it's just a little update from the Parent site :)
 
Mr Skills said:
I actually think the very horribleness of comic sans makes it work in this context - it's like a child has scrawled "widget" over it. The tacked-on-the-end-ness gives it a light-hearted feel and reminds you that it's just a little update from the Parent site :)
Click to expand...



That's exactly what I was going to say.
You did a good job ashjamben, keep up the good work.
 
Thanks for making the widget. I hope you find the feedback useful.

I know of previous MacRumors widgets described here and here. If anyone knows of others, please post links to the threads.

MacRumors does not have "official" widgets, but members are welcome to create them.
 
Hi,

Good work. Here some things I would prefer to see :

1 - The text should be aligned but not left, I think it is called "justified" (that it takes the all space).

2 - More rounded corners of the main widget.

3 - The line that is just underneath the text, you should jump a line (so text, jump line, line, jump line, next post). It looks too cramped.

4 - The word "widget" beside the logo at the top, not nice. It would be better in the same style than the logo.

Otherwise, I like your widget, but I will only use it when it is a bit more eye candy.

Good luck.
 
Awesome. Thanks.

Suggestions:

• The ability to read a full article within the widget without opening a browser window (don't know if this is possible).
• Widget in the title should be horizontal and the title shouldn't have a colon. It should look like this: "MacRumors Widget". That way, it looks like the widget is a suffix like in the MacBook Air and Pro. The "W" in widget should be capitalized like Air and Pro are.
• The widget looks flat. The scroll bar is the only object that looks 3D. I think a gradient in the top and bottom would help but not reflect the website's look. Perhaps a border with a gradient that has the same colors as the scroll bar would work.
• The bottom should be a darker red. In Safari, right click on a page of a MacRumors article to find the color of the title background. Also, the title should be white.
• The subtitle "new and rumors…" is hard to read. Maybe increase the font size by 1 or 2.

I'm no professional; those are just my thoughts. If you decide to put any of those changes in, thank you.
 
thanks for the suggestions. when i get some time i'll see what i can do. i don't use any code in the widget, just all from dashcode using visual stuff, so i may have to learn abit of java? or whatever language widgets use, i think HTML but i already know quite abit of that.

any visual changes should be fairly easy to accomplish as its all done on photoshop, which i can edit pretty easily.

i'll just have to wait til i get a free night to give it a good go, i'll let you all know once one is up and running.

again thanks alot, any other comments and ideas would be great, and again please let me know if your using it. thanks
 
just thought i'd update this thread.

i've been on holiday for the last couple of weeks so havn't had chance to update the widget.

i'm hopefully gonna change the look of it abit, following the comments from previous posts. i think someone mentioned changing the text to centred or justified, but unfortunately i can't do anything with that. its comes from the rss feed and can't be modified.

i'm off college for the summer so should get something done within the next couple of weeks hopefully, i'll update again once i have.
 
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