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 article for the July 2010 MacTech issue

Title: A Dashboard Widget that Supports Copy-and-Paste

Subtitle: How to implement Copy-and-Paste in Dashboard

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.

Hot!

It will be pretty hot in Greece the next few days as you can see in the screenshot from the Weather Widget.

iStat Pro and new iMacs

One of my favorite Widgets (iStat Pro) does not work properly with my new iMac.

More specifically, the network part of the Widget does not show any activity!

I will let you know when I get an updated version of iStat Pro that fixes the problem.

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.

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.

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

The August 2008 issue of MacTech magazine includes an article that I wrote.
Title: Creating Widgets with Dashcode
subtitle: When to use Dashcode, and other important widget information

enjoy!!

The July 2008 of MacTech magazine has an article of mine

The July 2008 issue of MacTech magazine includes an article that I wrote.

Title: Creating a Dashboard Widget that Processes an RSS Feed.

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.

Widgets and the defaults command

You can use the defaults command (from Terminal.app) to learn more about the options of a Widget.

Example: defaults read widget-com.apple.widget.translation

gives:

{

    "41a9b19e2d5c5543-fromLanguage" = 3;

    "41a9b19e2d5c5543-toLanguage" = 5;

    fromLanguage = 3;

    toLanguage = 5;

}

Found it in Dashboard-dev mailing list.

Do not use a directory called "resources" inside a Widget

If you have a folder called "resources" inside your Widget, this will create troubles with the Widget's concept of "Resources". Do not use that name.

(from the dashboard-dev mailing list)

Use @loader_path instead of @executable_path

If the Widget plugin is not at @executable_path, it will not be able to find a framework via @executable_path/../Frameworks/... So how can you load a framework in a Widget plugin.

The solution is to use @loader_path instead of @executable_path.

(from the dashboard-dev mailing list)

Reading Existing Widgets

I am a frequent and proud member of Apple Discussions.

I often read questions about certain Widget programming techniques. What I usually answer is to check existing Widgets that implement that particular technique.

So, if you want to implement a given technique, first, search for existing Widgets that contain that technique. It can save you a great amount of time!

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.

Do not call widget.system() synchronously in production Widgets

Do not call widget.system() synchronously in production Widgets. The synchronous mode is there for testing purposes.

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.

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.