O'Reilly Network Weblogs: Dashboard widgets rock!

Published on The O'Reilly Network (http://www.oreillynet.com/)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7267

Dashboard widgets rock!

by Elisabeth Robson
Jun. 23, 2005
URL: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/

I installed Tiger (10.4) on my iMac G5 about a month ago and I haven't looked back. I have found only one bug so far - when I plug in my headphones to the sound out jack in the back and then pull them back out, I can't get the sound to go back onto the speakers unless I reboot.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is because one of the things I love about Tiger is dashboard widgets! Many of them are completely useless, but tons of fun. But there are a few that I've quickly found to be indispensible:

Dashflix: a Netflix widget that shows me what's on my queue and what movies I have out. Very quick and handy way to get Netflix updates without going to the site.

US Weather: a weather map that I keep on "current weather". When I click on it, it zooms in and gets big. Very cool.

AccuWeather: a forecast widget with lovely graphics showing the highs/lows and sunny/rain for 5 days.

Wikipedia: A little window into the best encyclopedia online. I look up everything I want to more about on Wikipedia already, so this widget just makes it even more handy.

Dictionary/Thesaurus: A must for writers :-)

RabbitRadio: NPR all the time.

Movie Finder: Easy way to check on movies playing in my local area.

Last but not least: the Daily Tao, a widget with a verse from the Tao Te Ching each day to help get my mind in the right place.

What's on YOUR dashboard??

Elisabeth Robson is an author and software developer. She is coauthor of O'Reilly's Head First Design Patterns and Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML.