Mountain Lion: Page Outs

This is the output of the iStat Pro Dashboard Widget.
What it shows is the there are ZERO Page Outs on my iMac running Mountain Lion after 3.1 mil Page Ins!
This for me means that Mountain Lion has better memory management than Lion (and the other Mac OS X versions)!

My article for the August 2010 MacTech issue

Title: Creating a Dashboard Widget that Supports Localization

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". You can learn many things from the eBook. You can buy it here.

My favorite Widget (iStat Pro)

My favorite Widget is iStat Pro from iSlayer.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". You can learn many things from the eBook. You can buy it here.

F4 or F12 for Dashboard

When Dashboard came out, the recommended keyboard shortcut for it was the F12 key.

Both the new Aluminum Apple keyboards recommend the F4 key, although you can change this behavior from System Preferences.

What keyboard shortcut are you using?

My eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP.

You can buy it here.

Using Scientific Widgets

Click here.

Found on Apple’s Science Productivity Lab.

My article for the Dec.2008 issue of Mactech

Title: A Dashboard Widget that Supports Drag-and-Drop

Subtitle: How to drag-and-drop files and directories between Dashboard Widgets and/or Finder

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". You can learn many things from the eBook. You can buy it here.

Benefits from reading the "Programming Dashboard Widgets" book

• Learn how to create Dashboard Widgets
  
• Demystify Dashboard Widgets
  
• Debug Dashboard Widgets
  
• Learn useful tools
  

You will also learn:

• the basics of MySQL
  
• the basics of Shell programming
  
• some UNIX topics
  

Every chapter has a rich Bibliography based on the presented topic.

My opinion is that by reading the eBook you will become a better Mac OS X user and programmer.

The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

DashboardStarter

"DashboardStarter is a small application that brings up Dashboard and closes it right away. Drag the app to your login items and have Dashboard load the widgets in the background."

This loads your Widgets and you do not have to wait them to load the first time your run Dashboard. Very handy.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

The October 2008 issue of MacTech has an article of mine!

Title: A Dashboard Widget that Reads and Saves its Preferences

Subtitle: Create a Dashboard Widget that can save and read data after restarting it

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Creating a Dashboard Widget that uses a Plugin

The "Creating A Dashboard Widget that uses a Plugin" article that I wrote for MacTech is online.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Use a Dashboard Widget outside Dashboard

Although it seems strange, it is true: you can use a Dashboard Widget outside the Dashboard environment! The way to accomplish it includes the following steps:

- First you open Dashboard.

- After opening Dashboard, you should press the little circle with the cross on the bottom left corner of Dashboard.

- Then you select the Widget you want to bring outside Dashboard and click on it.

- You start dragging the Widget.

- You should now keep your mouse button pressed and close Dashboard (by pressing the F12 key for example).

- You now release the pressed mouse button.

- Your Widget is still there but Dashboard is gone! You are in Finder now.

Note: Before doing the above steps, you should give the following command at your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

This command activates the Dashboard Development mode and keeps it active until you type the same command, having a NO instead of YES at the end. You should now login/logout or restart your Mac for the setting to take effect.

If you want to insert a Widget that is located outside Dashboard, inside Dashboard you should follow the reverse procedure!

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". You can buy it here.

Mac OS X 10.5: Dashboard widgets issues with Parental Controls and Fast User Switching enabled

According to this Apple's Knowledge Base article, Fast User Switch and Parental Controls may cause malfunctions to Dashboard.

Debugging Dashboard Widgets

The best source for debugging information comes by Apple itself! Apple released a technical note full of Widget debugging information and techniques. It is Technical Note TN2139. You can find it here.

The best technique for debugging Widgets is to use the alert() function. alert() statements are written to the Console. Please remember to remove your alert() function calls when you finish debugging or otherwise your Console logs may become too crowded. The TN2139 Technical Note explains in more detail the printing of the debug information in both the Dashboard environment and Safari.

One last advice when your newly developed Widget is not working properly: check that you have all the compulsory files included in the Widget bundle. I found that this is the most usual case when I was having difficulties with my Widgets. . . The next more frequent reason was misspelled filenames.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

My Dashboard at home

The MacTech.com Widget that you can see in the screenshot is fully explained in my eBook. It is a Widget that reads RSS feed and displays it - I use it every day. I also use the Perl Disk Information Widget that is also explained in the eBook.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

My Dashboard at work

Disadvantages of Widget plugins

• It is more difficult and time consuming to program a plugin for a functionality that is also supported by JavaScript.
  

• It is more difficult to debug a plugin.
  
• You have to learn Objective-C.
• You also have to learn Cocoa.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Advantages of Widget plugins

• Nobody can change your Widget plugin.
• You can create commercial Widgets.
• Your source code is hidden and more secure.
• You can do things that simply are not possible with JavaScript and the built-in Widget functions by using the Cocoa framework.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Book Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Dashboard

Chapter 2: Existing Apple Widgets

Chapter 3: Existing Widgets

Chapter 4: Programming the Hello World! Widget

Chapter 5: Using JavaScript for creating Widgets

Chapter 6: Creating a Widget using Perl

Chapter 7: Programming Widgets using PHP

Chapter 8: Creating Widget plugins using Objective-C

Chapter 9: A Widget that uses UNIX Shell Commands

Chapter 10: Advanced Widget Techniques

Chapter 11: A Widget that processes RSS feed

Chapter 12: A Widget that Interacts with a MySQL Database

Chapter 13: Widget Hints and Tips

Appendix A: A Short Introduction to HTML

Appendix B: An Introduction to CSS

Appendix C: Reading and Understanding an Existing Apple Widget

Programming Dashboard Widgets eBook released!

This is the first post of the official blog site for my "Programming Dashboard Widgets" eBook.

You can buy the book here.

Number of Pages: 370

Number of Chapters: 13

Number of Appendices: 3

Based on standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Dashboard Widgets are simple to build and easy to extend. The "Programming Dashboard Widgets" book contains all that your need to know in order to create and program your own Apple Dashboard Widgets. The book also shows you techniques that help you fine-tune, extend and explore existing Widgets.

You do not have to be an HTML, CSS or JavaScript expert to understand the book as it presents and explains all the necessary HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge. Each book chapter contains bibliographic references that will help you expand your knowledge.

You can find its detailed TOC in PDF format here.

Thank you!

Mihalis.