Which widgets would you like to see made?

[stcanard]

Arghh!! I never understood that screen. Does it mean Dashboard is a memory hog?

Don't worry about it. When dashboard is invisible, the widgets aren't doing anything and would get swapped out if the memory's needed. So the only time they would have an effect on your system would be when dashboard is showing, and then you're not doing anything else anyway.

Worst case scenario is they grow your swap file a little bit.

Anyway, I think an iChat or MSN Messenger widget would be good. You don't need to keep it on all the time, and don't need to minimize it if I don't want it there. Pushing F12 is much easier than grabbing the mouse and moving that around to maximize. Also, I would use the language translator while I'm on MSN, which would make having it on the dashboard useful.

For IM I find nothing beats the Growl + Quicksilver combination. It allows me to carry on a conversation without ever interrupting what I'm doing. Even dashboard would be a step back on that one.

 

[supergod]

Posing another additional question

More ideas for widgets:

A rhyming dictionary. This would be very easy and simple to implement (not to mention useful).
Fedex tracker. I have no idea what it would like like for sure, but the idea is there.

Beyond ideas for widgets, I want to pose another additional question:
How would you like to see the dashboard changed or better implemented?

I know there are a few immediate flaws with dashboard and those are: the inability to place it whereever one wants, the inability to resize it, the inability to select not having the dashboard dissapear when clicking on the desktop (having instead to press a button or use a hotcorner) and the general ugliness of the perforated metal interface (do we really need any more/new visual themes/interfaces for OSX. SIMPLIFY)

Being able to have the dashboard have a growing effect when scrolling similar to the dock should be obvious, but it's not there. Having it be at the sides or top (thus not just a second "dock") makes sense because it differentiates it from the dock and uses the empty desktop space on widescreen monitors. Having a minidashboard would make sense if you don't want to have all those widgets, which reminds me: why can't you remove widgets you don't want from the dashboard?

All in all, with these flaws, the dashboard seems to me to be a very "first-gen" implementation of the technologies and concepts, and that hopefully Apple will be majorly updating, fixing and expanding upon the idea sooner than the next OS.

Lastly: perforated metal? What were they thinking? Considering widgets are about as far from "pro" as possible, why would they associate them with the look of their powermacs? Wouldn't a glossy white look, maybe in the style of the new mail app, be much more appropriate, not to mention easier on the eyes? Apple, at least give us the ability to customize the dashboard background with whatever image we want (don't make use wait for a third party app).

 

[stcanard]

Fedex tracker. I have no idea what it would like like for sure, but the idea is there.

I suspect it would look something like this. At least to start

 

[powerbook911]

Is there any site or book that would help me learn to make widgets? I've made HTML pages, so would it be a huge step to make a widget?

 

[nagromme]

My 10

1. TV schedules!!!!!

2. Movies!!!!!

3. RSS watcher

4. RTF editor: TextEdit Jr. -- It would keep open any single file of your choice. Bold, italic, and size +/- would be all the control I need, plus a button to launch the full TextEdit.

5. Unified "new email" status for your OS X Mail AND free accounts like GMail... AND FAXES all in one. A clickable icon and number for each service.

6. Screen Zoom control -- Just + and - ... No need for On and Off, it would turn On when you were at anything but 100%, and Off when you were at 100%. (I'd like that better than leaving it On at 100% like I do now--because that uses a bit of CPU when the mouse moves.)

7. Shrunken "big thumbnail" view of any Web page(s) you want to watch, refreshing at any rate you choose, with an icon to indicate a change, and another to indicate the site is down.

8. Sync Now (I'd use it for the calendars and contacts on my iPod)

9. Mini iPhoto browser: pick album from a popup, cycle photos with arrow buttons. Click to launch iPhoto and see photo at full size.

10. Draggable magnifying lens that looked THROUGH the black background and enlarged what was underneath, say, 4x. I'm guessing that the underlying image is accessible to Cocoa developers in some way, so a portion of it would be enlarged and rendered in the widget. Preferably updating live.

Is there any site or book that would help me learn to make widgets? I've made HTML pages, so would it be a huge step to make a widget?

Nope, not a huge step, depending what you have in mind

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html

 

[mpw]

Not my idea, I saw it elsewhere in these forums so if it’s your’s please step forward and take the credit.

How about a widget to show your internet/bandwidth usage so you can see when you’re approaching any ISP monthly usage cap.

I’m on an unlimited plan at the moment and would like to know which cheap offers to ignore because of restrictive caps.

 

[nagromme]

Some more:

* "Forum Composer" -- compose forum posts looking at actual styled text, and then click Copy to copy the post with forum codes, ready to paste. (Also handy: popup menu with settings for your different forums--since the codes do vary, and a list of "snippets" ready to re-use.) This might be handier as a NON-widget, except I like the idea that it's always ready without taking up any space in my UI. Maybe this could be done with Tiger's built in HTML-editing, and then simply replace the HTML tags with forum tags at the end.

* Clipboard Viewer! (With styled text shown if possible. And non-text clipboards too.)

* Consolidated download progress list for files on the desktop currently downloading from common apps (browsers, FTP, BitTorrent, etc.)

* Weather radar

* Google maps/satellite view with two window sizes (functionality could all be handled by Google itself)

* Network detector (WiFi, BT, Ethernet etc.) and network status summary

* CPU/memory/HD meter with list of the the top 3 consumers of each

* BT phone companion--call log, top 10 most-dialed numbers witth one click, caller ID, battery status, etc.

 

[bgibbs]

Home Theater Remote Control

Not sure whether this would work on a Windows tablet, but maybe Apple will make the hardware? Or, maybe a program could be written to adapt IE?

Anyhoo, I'd like to see widgets to control my HTMac - to control IR devices (receiver, TV, cable box) and programs like VLC or DVD Player on my Mac. Between Widgets and Automator, it wouldn't be too difficult to automate and personalize your own HT.

Maybe Apple is planning something like this in connection with iHome? The appearance of Sony's president at MacWorld in January led me to believe that maybe they were planning to announce that the PSP could be adapted for use as a remote control. The Mini and the PSP throughout the house (with a G5 media server tucked-away in a closet) would make an affordable, cool and fun home automation setup.

 

[matticus008]

1. TV schedules!!!!!

2. Movies!!!!!

A QuickTime widget exists already--if it's not included, check out dashboarddev.com (now dashboardwidgets.com)

3. RSS watcher

Also already made.

5. Unified "new email" status for your OS X Mail AND free accounts like GMail... AND FAXES all in one. A clickable icon and number for each service.

Mail checker widgets already exist, and one of the major points is that you can have multiple instances open. One for every account, as it were.

7. Shrunken "big thumbnail" view of any Web page(s) you want to watch, refreshing at any rate you choose, with an icon to indicate a change, and another to indicate the site is down.

Plenty of minibrowser widgets around.

9. Mini iPhoto browser: pick album from a popup, cycle photos with arrow buttons. Click to launch iPhoto and see photo at full size.

I could have sworn I've seen something like this somewhere, but now I can't find it.

10. Draggable magnifying lens that looked THROUGH the black background and enlarged what was underneath, say, 4x. I'm guessing that the underlying image is accessible to Cocoa developers in some way, so a portion of it would be enlarged and rendered in the widget. Preferably updating live.

This seems like something that shouldn't be a widget at all, but an applet that runs outside of the dashboard for normal use. The dashboard isn't meant to interact with the desktop workspace directly in this manner.

This was a great list of practical and useful widgets! Thankfully, most of your wishes have already been met. I highly recommend http://www.dashboardwidgets.com as it has several really useful widgets (and a healthy number of utterly useless ones, but your mileage may vary ).

As for the original post's idea, I don't like it. The idea is good, I mean it's a really great mini-GarageBand interface that would be really helpful, but as a widget it would be unnervingly complex and unwieldy. Widgets luckily aren't constrained to web-centric languages, so it would be possible to write a mini-GB, but with tremendous system resource useage and a fairly complex interface. It would also need to call a huge number of GB functions to the point where GB would essentially have to be running, and at that point, you might as well just use GarageBand. Frankly, I'm glad I don't get paid to do Mac development of any sort at my job--because now with Tiger, I'd be asked to create immense widgets to handle all sorts of tasks that need full-powered applications. They'd be asking for Dreamweaver: the widget from scratch with all features available.

I'm fiddling with a few widgets for some database entry and manipulation though, because I get to do graphics and artwork and not too much boring programming (despite being a sysadmin, I hate programming! I'm an artist by nature). I see this as the greatest business potential for Dashboard: custom-built widgets for those repetitive data entry/recordkeeping/report-making tasks that can always be available without being in the way. No more need for 7 browser windows and 3 bulky applications sitting on your desktop. With the pages already written, I just have to make a modified copy to pass the right strings and variables in the widget with a minimum of PHP/SQL dirtywork. Need to make an entry in a database? No need to navigate to the right server, log in, and find the correct entry page anymore. Just hit F12 and start plugging away. It's a thing of beauty.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I want my Shark Cam widget. Why did it get dropped from last year's demo? Too much for G4s?

 

[laurence59]

British Rail Timetable

I dunno how many Brits are here, but British Rail have an online rail timetable that updates every 2 mins. That would be cool as a widget - rather like the flight tracker but for trains.

-L

 

[sigamy]

I haven't thought these out very much but here are some ideas:

Folding/SETI: these typically run as screensavers. Could they be made into widgets, that still run in the background but only display when you pull up dashboard?

Front-end to game emulators: I've seen one weather widget where the UI was an old console TV. It would be cool to have widgets that can call Gameboy or SNES or Sega emulators and the UI looks like a TV or the console or the gameboy. Nice for the quick little game here and there.

Palm emulator: make a widget look like a Sony Clie or Palm Tungsten. It could start with just address book and calendar but maybe be made into a full Palm emulator.

public transportation tracker: just like the flight tracker, but bus and rail schedules for your local city.

Traffic: pull traffic from the web, complete with maps and tie into a Mapquest widget for routing.

mapquest: routing/directions, with ability to print nicely formatted directions.

Password Keeper widget: There are many little apps to store passwords and personal data. I'd like one as a widget that is always at my figer tips for times when I need a website password or my car's VIN #.

 

[jhomayne]

Folding/SETI: these typically run as screensavers. Could they be made into widgets, that still run in the background but only display when you pull up dashboard?

great idea!

i used to use SETI@home but now i don't run a screensaver so this would be great.

 

[DaveP]

I would definitely have to second the sports scores ticker. Another one with stats about how long the computer has been running, how long on a particular user, etc.

 

[Applespider]

I dunno how many Brits are here, but British Rail have an online rail timetable that updates every 2 mins. That would be cool as a widget - rather like the flight tracker but for trains.

Your local station's departure board would be very very useful! And London Underground's non-running Tubes alongside - a nice LT roundel with the line information running around the top of the circle.

And yes, it was me earlier who asked about a broadband usage meter in another thread.

 

[nagromme]

Folding/SETI

I've been thinking of that too--PLUS user/team stats tracking would be cool.

In the case of F@H, the CLI version already runs faster than the screensaver (or the graphical app) version--and there's already a graphical front end that not only installs but also runs/controls the CLI version: InCrease. (I highly recommend it--you'll get the speed and dual-CPU support of the CLI version but you'll never TOUCH the CLI. All graphical and easy.)

I'm going to suggest a Widget version of (or companion to) InCrease

 

[GorillaPaws]

Here's a couple of ideas I've had:

1. A bank account balance widget that would access your current bank account balance for most major banks and display your available balance. Also, it could expand to display a list of the last 5-10 transactons that have gone through. It just sucks to have to log on to wachovia.com, enter my username/password, wait for it to load, select online banking, wait for it to load, just to see my balance; it sure would be nice just to use an f-key.

2. A widget that would give the basic formating rules for various common style manuals i.e. MLA, APA, Chigago etc. That's the kind of thing that sucks to have to stop what you're doing in the middle of a paper to search the web for, or to track down your manual that you've bought, and flip through the index to locate. I picture the window having a series of drop down menus, with a small space for the explanation of the rule (5 lines of text, expandable?). Maybe it could flip and list MLA, APA, and Chicago with the circular check boxes (radio buttons?). And when you check one it changes the window color (with a nice fading animation?). e.g. you have MLA checked and the window is aqua-blue, then you check the APA button, and it quickly fades through the purple specturm to aqua-red for APA. Click the Chicago button and it fades through oarnge to yellow etc. That way when you first bring it up you'll quickly recognise what style you're dealing with, for when you're proofreading your paper at 4:30AM.

3. Finally, I would love to have a word-of-the-day widget that displays a new word each day with it's etymology and stuff. I get a paper calendar every year for christmas, but I only read it when I'm in the bathroom... so I'd be nice to have on my dashboard.

I know a lot of people are bashing dashboard these days, but honestly, I think it's a brilliant move by Apple. It gets a lot of people intrerested in programming for the Mac, and allows them to experience how cool Xcode is. Some people may discover an aptitude for mac programming that they never knew they had, and could lead to an increase in the dev. population for OSX. What do you guys think?

 

[aswitcher]

Ok a few thoughts...

A widget that lists all Apps going out across the net, to what IP addresses, and what volume of traffic, first and last time accessed, possibly ports used, and a whois lookup option to help get some sort of geo...and if anyone can do one that did and displayed on a world map traceroutes for all these that would be nice as well

A widget that displays webcams is a must - with some controls about refresh and caching

 

[Applespider]

3. Finally, I would love to have a word-of-the-day widget that displays a new word each day with it's etymology and stuff. I get a paper calendar every year for christmas, but I only read it when I'm in the bathroom... so I'd be nice to have on my dashboard.

I like that idea. A 'desk' calendar style widget with options for cartoons/word of day/thought of day etc.

I'm also wondering about one that would pull a random photo from iPhoto (or an album you specify) like a rotating picture frame of interesting shots (but without having to have it as your desktop image)

 

[mojocoggo]

>:-O

an ichat one if there isn't already (i'm not sure if one is bundled)
caller id

WTF why would you want that??? Thats even more useless than a spotlight widget

Anyway, I would really like to see a widget that can acces the T-Mobile Sidekick's desktop interface... The T-mobile site really sucks

 

[Laurel]

Rhyme Dictionary

I would like a rhyming dictionary widget. It always takes a long time to find a good one on google search.

 

[iHateWindows]

One that would convert videos to iPod format, especially one for ffmpegX.

 

[Crystalmyst]

Now, first off:

A widget that halts all activeated widgets (unless specified), and unpauses them once they are selected. That way it doesn't drain your memory.

Then, since I have a big thing about creating, I wanna make/find a Creator's Widget.

This includes:
______________________
Under the "Writer" tab:
- Dictionary
- Rhyming Dictionary
- Thesaurus
- Encylopedia
- Add more..
______________________
Under the "Artist" tab:
- Load project using default image editor
- Open default image editor
- ?? <- Needs some filling in...
- Add more..
______________________
Under the "Musician" tab:
- Record (audio)
- Open default audio editor
- Load project using default image editor
- Add more...
______________________
*Customizable menus*
Under the "Customize" tab:
- Add new section
- Change theme
- Edit menus

It's not actually a quote, just to help make it stand out.

This would be awesome, I wanna do it myself 'cos i doubt Apple would do it...

~Tim

 

[Cromulent]

Now, first off:

A widget that halts all activeated widgets (unless specified), and unpauses them once they are selected. That way it doesn't drain your memory.

Then, since I have a big thing about creating, I wanna make/find a Creator's Widget.



It's not actually a quote, just to help make it stand out.

This would be awesome, I wanna do it myself 'cos i doubt Apple would do it...

~Tim

Nice one and a half year thread bump there .

 

[iShak]

a british TV schedule widget for the five basic channels .. that actually works ..