Everybody now knows that Apple will unleash Tiger on the world on April 29th. They even changed the look of their homepage just so you don’t miss it.
Here is an article published in their developer connection that gives an overview on developing widgets for Dashboard, Apple’s new set of mini-applications dubbed widgets which is very similar to Konfabulator. Some would say it is a blatant rip-off, but that is another discussion for another day.
The biggest different between Dashboard Widgets and Konfabulator is that Dashboard uses XHTML and CSS with some javascript to create its Widgets.
So if you are interested in developing your own Dashboard Widgets, check out this resource.
“Some would say it is a blatant rip-off, but that is another discussion for another day.”
Why put it off ’till another day? If someone has a good idea, I have no problem with someone else improving upon it. Now, if it’s the same shit with chrome background, I’ll just stick with M$.
I don’t mind free stuff being added to an OS, but can’t help but feel sorry for Konfabulator.
I am pretty sure it will be hard for them to market something that is included in an OS, and try and bring a profit.
Apple always complained that others were rippin’ off their operating system. Now, it seems that Apple is doing a copying of their own with Sherlock (aka Watson) and Dashboard (aka Konfabulator)
As concluded elsewhere, “Desktop Accessories” was an original idea by Bud Tripple at Apple back in the early eighties. Check it out:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_Ornaments.txt&topic=User%20Interface&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium
So it’s actually Konfabulator being the copier !!
Tons of sites have are showing up with widgets to download. WidgetTracker.com lists many of them.
http://www.widgettracker.com
There is a site I found the other day, I Heart Widgets, that looks promising.
Actually, Widgets had their first use in Unix systems. Not that I expect any Windows user to know this. The idea predates Konfabulator.
But as said, that is a discussion for another day.
If anyone needs help getting started building widgets for Dashboard, I’ve put together a brief tutorial that covers the basics plus some “advanced” topics:
http://andrew.hedges.name/widgets/dev/
Enjoy!
-Andrew