Dashboard is a discontinued feature of Apple Inc.'s macOS operating systems, used as a secondary desktop for hosting mini-applications known as widgets. These are intended to be simple applications that do not take time to launch. Dashboard applications supplied with macOS included a stock ticker, weather report, calculator, and notepad; while users could create or download their own.
Before Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, when Dashboard is activated, the user's desktop is dimmed and widgets appear in the foreground. Like application windows, they can be moved around, rearranged, deleted, and recreated (so that more than one of the same Widget is open at the same time, possibly with different settings). New widgets can be opened, via an icon bar on the bottom of the layer, loading a list of available apps similar to the iOS home screen or the macOS Launchpad. After loading, the widget is ready for use.
Dashboard was first introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.[1][2][3] It can be activated as an application, from the Dock, Launchpad, or Spotlight. It can also be accessed by a dashboard key.[4] Alternatively, the user can choose to make Dashboard open on moving the cursor into a preassigned hot corner or keyboard shortcut. Starting with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the Dashboard can be configured as a space, accessed by swiping four fingers to the right from the Desktops either side of it.
Widget support is reintroduced in macOS Sonoma, released in 2023.[6] In macOS Sonoma, Apple has integrated the Dashboard with the Desktop. Users are still able to keep widgets in the Notification Center.
Widget functions and capabilities
Dashboard widgets, like web pages, are capable of many different things, including of performing tasks that would be complicated for the user to access manually.[7] One example is the Google Search widget, which simply opens up the user's web browser and performs a Google search. Other widgets, like Wikipedia, grab the contents of web pages and display them within Dashboard. Some widgets can also serve as games, using Adobe Flash (or another multimedia authoring program) to create games just as if they were in a web browser. It is also possible for Mac users to create their own widgets using built-in software.
Graphics
Dashboard uses a variety of graphical effects for displaying, opening, and using widgets. For instance, a 3-D flip effect is used to simulate the widget flipping around; by clicking on a small i icon in the right bottom corner, the user can change the preferences on the reverse side; other effects include crossfading and scaling from icon to body (when opening widgets), a "spin-cycle effect" when a widget is focused and the user presses Command-R or a suck-in effect when they are closed. On sufficiently powered Macs, widgets will produce a ripple effect when they are opened, like a leaf falling onto water. These effects consume considerable processing power [citation needed] but with the help of macOS’s Quartz Extreme and Core Image graphics architectures, sufficient computing power to render them in real time is available.[citation needed] As with Exposé, Front Row and the minimize effect, holding shift down while calling the Dashboard or opening the Dashboard menu bar will display the effect in slow motion.
Creation of widgets
Dashboard widgets are created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript.[8] Because the same languages are used for creating websites, many web developers can already build them. Widgets themselves are, at the core, simply HTML files that are displayed within the Dashboard layer; they use the WebKit application framework that is also used in Apple's Safari web browser, meaning even users running earlier versions of macOS — where Dashboard is unavailable — can build them. There is widget API allows the widgets to use Mac-specific interface elements such as the Apple Slider.[3]
When a Dashboard widget is built, it usually consists of six files:
The widget's HTML file, which is the actual file that will be displayed in the Dashboard layer
The widget's CSS file, which is used for styling the widget (but is called on from the HTML file)
The widget's JavaScript file, although it may be implemented directly within the HTML file if the developer desires
The widget's Property List (called “Info.plist”), which is what Dashboard uses to load the widget’s properties (i.e.: name, version, HTML file, etc.)
Once all of these files are in the root of a directory, it is given a name and the extension ".wdgt", and then it can be opened up in Dashboard as a widget. More complex widgets may also include a Cocoa widget plugin (for platform-specific functionality), one or more JavaScript files (for text scrolling, preferences, etc.) or multiple images (for personalized select menus or buttons).
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard includes an application called Dashcode, which is a more user-friendly way of creating widgets. Another new feature of Leopard is called "Web Clip" which lets users easily create widgets from parts of a webpage.[9] For example, during the WWDC 2007 keynote, Steve Jobs made widgets out of the following: the featured news headlines on Yahoo.com, the top ten most searched terms on Google, the Photo of the Day on National Geographic, the Dilbert comic strip, and the box office information from Rotten Tomatoes. The user can also customize the border to further personalize the widgets.
Comparison with Konfabulator
Many people have made comparisons between Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard, especially after Apple announced the feature while Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was in development. It was a subject of debate in the online community following the few months before Tiger's official release.
One school of thought came to the conclusion that Dashboard was a "rip-off" of Konfabulator. It points out the visual and functional similarities between Dashboard has been widely compared to Konfabulator (later Yahoo! Widget Engine) and sometimes called a copy of it, due to the similarities between their graphical aspects and the fact that they both use the term “widgets” to describe the objects in their environments.[10] Konfabulator may, in turn, have been based on Apple’s Desk Accessories, first released in 1984 with the original Macintosh. Desk Accessories, similar to widgets, were small mini-applications that operated on a user’s desktop. After the introduction of System 7 and cooperative multitasking, the necessity of creating Desk Accessories was removed and developers were encouraged to create applications instead. The OS continued to support them, for backward compatibility, until the switch to Mac OS X (In fact, the Calculator desk accessory remained in the Mac OS through version 9, seventeen years without a significant update).[11][12]
The codebases for Konfabulator and Dashboard are also different: Konfabulator uses XML and JavaScript to generate Widgets, whereas Dashboard uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Objective-C.[13]
Included widgets
In the first version of Dashboard released with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger update 10.4.3. Apple included 14 widgets. They consisted of:
After the Macworld 2006 keynote, Steve Jobs also announced four new widgets (Ski Report, People Finder, Google Search, and ESPN), as well as significant updates to the Phone Book and Calendar widgets. All of these are available through the Mac OS X 10.4.4 Tiger update.
In addition, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, released in late 2007, includes new widgets. One of these is Web Clip, which allows any user to turn a rectangular section of any webpage into a widget (This, however, only works with the Safari web browser). The widget updates as the website does, and all links and other interactive material in the widget's selection of the webpage works as if the website is being accessed from Safari. Another new widget is Movies, which allows users to find currently playing movies at local theaters, view trailers, and purchase tickets directly from Dashboard. In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion the Phone Book and iTunes Controller widgets were removed
Widgets on iOS
Apple has never announced support for the installation of Dashboard widgets on iOS. Even though, in June 2008, an unannounced update of Dashcode that was packaged with the iPhone SDK allowed for the creation of iPhone-oriented web widgets, it is unknown if this version of Dashcode would support the creation of AJAX-driven mobile widgets that could be installed natively on iOS.
It has been demonstrated that installing Dashboard widgets on a jailbroken iOS device is possible in theory, but most desktop-oriented widgets are not oriented to usage or interaction on iOS's multi-touchscreen-oriented interface; they may also rely on DashboardClient's widget JavaScript object, which is not part of iOS.
On June 2, 2014, as part of their announcement of iOS 8, Apple announced that in the "Today" view (which is accessible by swiping down from the status bar) will be able to have downloadable widgets from the App Store.[14] While not the same desktop-oriented widgets that are found in Dashboard, this represented the first time that widgets became available officially (i.e., without jailbreaking) on iOS.
There is an unrelated CarPlay feature with the same name introduced with iOS 13.
On June 22, 2020, during the WWDC Keynote Address, Apple introduced widgets for iOS 14. These widgets can be placed on the homescreen, and can be resized. Users can stack up to 10 widgets, or choose a "Smart Stack" widget which will change depending the user's activity.[15]
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
iCab is a web browser for MacOS and Classic Mac OS by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser (CAB) for Atari TOS compatible computers. It was one of the few browsers still updated for the classic Mac OS prior to that version being discontinued after version 3.0.5 in 2008; Classilla was the last browser that was maintained for that OS but it was discontinued in 2021.
The history of macOS, Apple's current Mac operating system formerly named Mac OS X until 2011 and then OS X until 2016, began with the company's project to replace its "classic" Mac OS. That system, up to and including its final release Mac OS 9, was a direct descendant of the operating system Apple had used in its Mac computers since their introduction in 1984. However, the current macOS is a UNIX operating system built on technology that had been developed at NeXT from the 1980s until Apple purchased the company in early 1997.
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into several of Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS and visionOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine WebKit, which was derived from KHTML.
Yahoo Widgets is a discontinued free application platform for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, specifically Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The software was previously called Konfabulator, but after being acquired by computer services company Yahoo on July 25, 2005, it was rebranded. The name Konfabulator was subsequently reinstated as the name of the underlying rendering engine. The engine uses a JavaScript runtime environment combined with an XML interpreter to run small applications referred to as widgets, and hence is part of a class of software applications called widget engines. On February 27, 2012, Yahoo updated the License agreement stating that as of April 3, 2012 Yahoo! Widgets will continue to be available for download but support and development would stop.
Aqua is the graphical user interface, design language and visual theme of Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. It was originally based on the theme of water, with droplet-like components and a liberal use of reflection effects and translucency. Its goal is to "incorporate color, depth, translucence, and complex textures into a visually appealing interface" in macOS applications. At its introduction, Steve Jobs noted that "... it's liquid, one of the design goals was when you saw it you wanted to lick it".
Mac OS X Tiger is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Included features were a fast searching system called Spotlight, a new version of the Safari web browser, Dashboard, a new 'Unified' theme, and improved support for 64-bit addressing on Power Mac G5s. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger also had a number of additional features that Microsoft had spent several years struggling to add to Windows with acceptable performance, such as fast file search and improved graphics processing.
Mac OS X Leopard is the sixth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tiger, and is available in two editions: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a server version, Mac OS X Server. It retailed for $129 for the desktop version and $499 for Server. Leopard was superseded by Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009. Mac OS X Leopard is the last version of macOS that supports the PowerPC architecture as its successor, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, functions solely on Intel based Macs.
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This is a comparison of widget engines. This article is not about widget toolkits that are used in computer programming to build graphical user interfaces.
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The sidebar is a graphical control element that displays various forms of information to the right or left side of an application window or operating system desktop. Examples of the sidebar can be seen in the Opera web browser, Apache web OpenOffice, LibreOffice, SoftMaker Presentations and File Explorer; in each case, the app exposes various functionalities via the sidebar.
A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.
Windows Desktop Gadgets is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features a sidebar anchored to the side of the desktop. Its widgets can perform various tasks, such as displaying the time and date. In Windows Vista, the widgets are restricted to a sidebar but in Windows 7, they can be freely moved anywhere on the desktop.
HTML audio is a subject of the HTML specification, incorporating audio input, playback, and synthesis, as well as speech to text, all in the browser.
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↑ Inc., Apple. "Apple Developer". Apple.com. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved December 17, 2017.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
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