Zip. I use the Dock, that’s all.
So, this would be your dashboard confessional?
I run 10.3.9 - is the Dash a Tiger feature?
Yeah… I don’t get the widgets that are just stripped-down, site-specific browsers. I do like the specific, small-function ones, like the gas prices. If I’m headed out the door, it’s nice to hit one key as I walk by the computer and have the cheapest gas station pop up. Not necessarily a time I want to go to open/switch to the browser, click the bookmark bar, and type in the zip code.
For you Dashboard dislikers:
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/06/07/widgetkiller-stop-dashboard-dead-in-its-tracks/
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/03/24/bye-bye-dashboard-1-0/
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/08/11/widget-watch-disable-dashboard/
Is this where I explain that Quicksilver is the best program ever created, or is that witnessing more for GD?
Well for starters, widgets are all to the best of my knowledge, free. Full featured programs are usually bloated with features I don’t actually need, and they’re usually shareware at least.
iStat Pro for instance, is free and does what I need it to. I couldn’t find any regular programs that could monitor what I needed to monitor without that feature being bundled into a commercial application I’d have to pay for and don’t need.
That’s just it. Sometimes you just want the facts, ma’am, not launch a web browser, navigate to your site, wait for all the blinking ads to load, type in what you want, etc, etc.
Yes, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.
I like the information aggregators, like the ones I listed. I don’t use the special search ones since I’ve almost always got a browser open anyway. Some people like iStat. I used to run it, but it does basically the same thing as Activity Monitor. Both it and Activity Monitor are just GUIs on top of processes you could use through a terminal interface. iStat polls the system less often, but I occasionally use AM for killing processes, so I don’t usually run iStat.
Speaking of processes:
If you’ve got Activity Monitor running and switch into the Dashboard space, you’ll notice that your processor briefly spikes and the memory usage of the widgets you’ve got running goes from their resting state to whatever their active loads are. Right after you switch back they’ll be using slightly more memory than their previous resting state since system priorities are to keep things you’ve used recently resident in active memory so that they’re more responsive, in case you want to use them again.
The point of having them running in the background is that they aren’t using up resources until you invoke them and will use up fewer resources when you’re done using them than an active window would. That’s why it takes a few seconds to start up (on my older system anyway) the first time I use them after a boot. Before I invoke them, they aren’t using any memory. In fact, they aren’t even loaded until the first time you use them. The most resource-intensive ones I’ve got running use about 30 MB of active memory, and OS X is pretty good about swapping stuff out when programs aren’t actively using resources anyway. So if you aren’t running them just to prevent impact on your system, that’s not really a big concern, unless you’re running with really low memory, like 512 MB of RAM or below.
:: sob ::
I want a Mac.
(three more weeks, three more weeks…)
Witnessing, since we just have Mac dorks in here.
Quicksilver is a glorious freeware thingie for Mac that is like google desktop, Sherlock (or whatever Mac’s search thing is called right now. . . ah, Spotlight) and widgets have a baby, and that baby is the Messiah. You have an easy hotkey which pops up a window and you can call it up anytime. It indexes and searches your computer (some default things and then sections you ask it to (including browser bookmarks, say), and much faster than Spotlight)-- making good guesses as you type (smart autofill or whatever one calls it)-- and then when it finds what you’re looking for it will perform various actions, suggesting good guesses first-- of course actions like launching an app or opening a doc, but other things like skipping to the next itunes track or what have you. You can also navigate into file hierarchies, so, say, sift through your music list and play something specific without going into itunes. You can get it to talk to other programs and, say, do a web search using any number of engines it knows (updates via a list they’ve made online). So you can start a Google image search before you’ve bothered opening Firefox or stick a German phrase into a translation site, and open any of your bookmarks the same way, or navigate to (I think just) the first set of links from any of your bookmarked sites (so I can skim through RSS newsfeed headlines without opening the browser). You can get it to send short e-mails directly without opening a mail program. It will look things up in a dictionary program, do calculations and conversions, etc. It can have a ‘clipboard’ file storing a fair number of your recently manipulated snippets of whatever. (I’m just naming things I use it for-- there are a bunch of things people have designed for programming types and blogging types). A short learning curve and then you wonder how you bothered with life before it.
Oh, oh, you can tell in in short code to make a new sticky note or address book entry or make an appointment or task in iCal (I call it up, and type, verbatim, “. next friday 2 PM – fac meeting” and hit “ic. . .” and it guesses iCal and then guesses ‘create event’ as the most likely action and Bob’s my uncle. It’s smart-- it knows when “day after tomorrow” and “next Saturday” are).
Quicksilver rocks. 
If I want to look up the definition of a word, it’s easy:
ctrl-space
type a period and the word
hit enter
And up pops a dictionary. Once you’ve gotten that ctrl-space flow down, it becomes second nature. The amount of stuff you can control with Quicksilver is amazing – I’ve heard of people using it as a file browser – but I tend to keep it to looking up words, launching applications, opening bookmarks, and skipping iTunes tracks.
Anyway. As to what I have in Dashboard: very little; I don’t see a whole lot of need for it. Stuff like Wikipedia is better served by cmd-tabbing to the web browser and typing “wiki searchterm” into the search widget.
- standard six-day forecast
- calendar
- yellow and white pages search widgets
- iTunes controller
- RapidMetaBlog, for posting quick snippets to my wordpress blog
I’ve been converted to Quicksilver…
I’m going to start leaving pamphlets in bus stations. . .
Dictionary/Thesaurus
Solar Eclipse calculator
Countdown to my trip to Spain in August
World Population Counter
Deathwatch
CharacterPal
Piano Theory
SunClock
U.S. Weather
and some font-related stuff
What are you using for the countdown, panache45? (I found several countdown widgets…) I had no idea that I had the unit converter widget, but there it is. Very handy.
Never had much interest in these, but there are several that seem useful. I’m going to try out Quicksilver, too, I think. I’ve spent way too much time the last couple nights playing around with this. ::shakes fist at levdrakon::
GT
I’m not panache45, but I can fake it for a post. I used this for counting down days to my wedding. Really basic and simple.
To be fair, I did have it installed on my system, but I’d never thought about playing with me or anything like that. Your post convinced me to do so and now I think its the best thing ever.
Thank you all, I just downloaded Quicksilver! Wonderful! Great! Now what the heck does it do?
I got it with no plug ins. When I type in a word to search (like ‘Bikini’) I get hits in my Obit files of all things. I guess I better get on the Quicksilver forum to learn how to use this thing.
I now have a Mac!
Time to try out these things.
Ooh, lookie. Apple’s filed a new patent with a 3D interface for our widgets. It looks cool. I do have to say, too many widgets running gets kinda cluttered, but this should help tidy things up.
Alas, we won’t get it 'til Leopard, but I can wait.