[Ham-Mac] Dashboard Widgets

[Dick Kriss, AA5VU]

Jack, W6FB, raises an excellent point. If the widgets (Dashboard items) go
away as soon you launch a real application, I see no need for them at all.
Why would anyone want to waste time developing useless toys?  At one time I
played with some unix widgets under X11 and they did not seem to have any
value other than eye candy. I finally trashed X11 to free up some HD space.

When I first heard about the Dashboard I thought it would be neat to have a
Dashboard Cluster item; however, it would be useless unless you could see it
running along side your RTTY or PSK application.

Ditto on W6FB's request for a clarification on how the new dashboard items
really perform.  I would appreciate some comment on how a dashboard item
could be useful for ham radio vs. an application.


Dick, AA5VU
Still using Mac OS 10.3.9


On 4/30/05 7:10 PM, "Jack Brindle" <jackbrindle at earthlink.net> wrote:

>  haven't received the developer mailing yet with Tiger, so I haven't
> actually played with Dashboard yet. The demo I saw at MacWorld tends to
> make me think these things are a bit less useful than they could be.
> Unlike the old Desk Accessories of the original MacOS, it appears that
> all Dashboard widgets are displayed simultaneously, and when you switch
> to another app, they all disappear. Again, this was behavior from last
> January,  but if this is the case, I would much rather have a small
> application that does a job instead of a Dashboard widget. Yes, many of
> the widgets are really cool (OK, way, way cool from what I saw), but it
> appears to me that between the limitations and the relative ease
> (remember, I'm a developer) of creating small apps, why bother with
> widgets?
> 
> Now, can someone who actually has a copy of Tiger running set me
> straight as to how they actually perform?
> 
> 
> -Jack Brindle, W6FB