5.11. Dashboard | Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

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As you know, the essence of using Mac OS X is running programs , which often produce documents . In Tiger, however, there's a third category: a set of weird, hybrid entities that Apple calls widgets . They appear, all at once, floating in front of your other windows , when you press the F12 key. Welcome to the new Tiger environment called the Dashboard (Figure 5-20).

Note: You can change this keyboard assignment, as described below. Also, on laptops where F12 is the Eject key, you also have to hold down the Fn key (lower-left corner).

Figure 5-20. When you summon the Dashboard, you get a fleet of floating mini-programs that convey or convert all kinds of useful information. They appear and disappear all at once, on a tinted translucent sheet that floats in front of all your other windows. You get rid of Dashboard either by pressing the same key again (F12 or whatever) or by clicking anywhere on the screen except on a widget.

What are these weird, hybrid entities, anyway? They're not really programs, because they don't create documents or have Dock icons (although Dashboard itself has a Dock icon). They're certainly not documents, because you can't name or save them. What they most resemble, actually, is little Web pages. They're meant to display information, much of it from the Internet, and they're written using Web programming languages like HTML and JavaScript.

Tiger's starter widgets include a calculator, current weather reporter, stock ticker, clock, and so on. (You may have to wait 30 seconds or so for them to "warm up," go online, and display any meaningful information.) Mastering the basics of Dashboard won't take you long at all:

To move a widget , drag it around the screen. (Click anywhere but on a button, menu, or text box.)
To close a widget , press the Option key as you move the mouse across the widget's face. You'll see the circled X button appear at the widget's top left corner; click it.

Tip: If the Widget bar is open (as described below), every widget displays its X close button. You don't need the Option key.
To open a closed widget , click the circled + button at the bottom of the screen. Now the entire screen image slides upward by about an inch to make room for the Widget Bar: a " perforated metal" tray containing the full array of widgets, even the ones that aren't currently on the screen (Figure 5-21). (The complete list, with descriptions, appears later in this chapter.) Open one by clicking its icon.

On Macs with newish graphics cards, a new widget appears by splashing down into the center of your screen, sending realistic pond ripples across the liquidy glass of your screen. These widgets really know how to make an appearance, don't they?
To rearrange your widgets as they appear in the Widget Bar, open your hard drive Library Widgets folder. Here youll find the icons for your Dashboard widgets. To rearrange them, just rename them; they appear on the Widget Bar in alphabetical order. (You can also remove a widget for good by deleting it from this folder, if you must.)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Submit to Apple

What theI was working along in Preview, and all of a sudden it just vanished! Poof! And all I got was this lousy dialog box about "submitting to Apple." What's going on ?

Apple is trying to assimilate you.

Or, more accurately, it's trying to enlist your help in ferreting all the little glitches that make modern computing so much fun. If you're willing to click the Submit Report button and type a few comments ("I was just running Word, minding my own business, and when I clicked the Print toolbar button, the whole thing just crashed"), then Apple will add your report to the thousands flowing in from everyone else.

The idea is that when its programmers get a moment, they'll study these reports, track down the patterns ("Hmm, we've received 50,000 reports about that Print button in Word"), and then chase down the software company responsibleand, presumably, get a fix under way.

The report you submit is full of technical info that helps the programmers figure out what was happening at the time of the crash, but no personal information goes along for the ride. So if you feel like doing some good for your fellow Mac fans, by all means submit the report (via the Internet) whenever you're offered the chance.

Tip: The Dashboard icon also appears in your Dock, just in case you forget the F12 keystroke. On the other hand, if you prefer the keystroke, you can remove the icon from your Dock to make room for more important stuff. Control-click the icon and, from the shortcut menu, choose Remove from Dock.

Figure 5-21. You'll probably have to scroll the Widget Bar to see all the widgets, by clicking the arrows at either end. When you're finished opening new widgets, close the Widget Bar by clicking its circled X button at the left side of your screen.

5.11.1. Dashboard Tips

Like most new Tiger features, Dashboard is crawling with cool tips and tricks. Here are a few of the biggies:

If you just click an icon on the Widget Bar, the widget appears right in the middle of your screen. But if you drag the widget's icon off of the bar, you can deposit it anywhere you like on the screen.
There's a great keystroke that opens and closes the Widget Bar: -equal sign (=). (This keystroke may be different on non-U.S. keyboard layouts.)
To refresh a certain widgetfor example, to update its information from the Internetclick it and press -R. The widget instantly twist-scrambles itself into a sort of ice-cream swirl (you've got to see it to believe it) and then untwists to reveal the new data.
You can open more than one copy of the same widget. Just click its icon more than once in the Widget Bar. You wind up with multiple copies of it on your screen: three World Clocks, two Stock Trackers , or whatever. That's a useful trick when, for example, you want to track the time or weather in more than one city, or when you maintain two different stock portfolios.
If you keep the Shift key pressed when you summon Dashboard, the widgets fly onto the screen in gorgeous, translucent, 3-D slow motion . Aren't you glad you're alive to see the day?

5.11.2. Dashboard Prefs

To change the Dashboard keystroke to something other than F12, choose System Preferences, and then click Dashboard & Expos.

Tip: For faster service, Control-click the Dashboard icon on the dock. Choose Dashboard Preferences from the shortcut menu.

Here, you'll discover that you can choose almost any other keyboard combination to summon and dismiss the Dashboard, or even choose a screen corner that, when your mouse lands there, acts as the Dashboard trigger.

All of this works exactly as described on Section 5.3.2.2.

5.11.3. Widget Catalog

Here's a rundown of the 14 standard widgets that come preinstalled in Tiger. True, they look awfully simple, but some of them harbor a few secrets.

5.11.3.1. Address Book

The concept behind this widget is, of course, to give you faster access to your own address book. (Trudging off to the actual Address Book program takes way too long when you just want to look up a number.)

The widget may look like a simple Rolodex card, but it's actually filled with clickable shortcuts. For example:

Search bar . Type a few letters of somebody's name here. As you type, the widget homes in on that person's entry from the Address Book program.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Unchained Widgets

I love the widgets, but I wish they weren't locked away in their own Mac OS X "layer." I would like to work with the Calculator widget, for example, while I'm doing an Excel spreadsheet, without having to send the spreadsheet to the background .

No problem. What you want is Amnesty Widget Browser, a shareware program that you can download from, among other places, this book's "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com.

It adds a new menu-bar icon that, when opened, lists all of your widgets by name. You can now open them individuallyand, more importantly, without sending your other programs to the background. You've just freed your widgets from the translucent layer where they've been imprisoned.

If you see numbers at the bottom edge that say, for example, "1/12," then you've found more than one match. You're looking at the first of 12 matches. You can click the little right/left arrows to page through them.

Click the circled X at the right end of the search bar to erase the box and start over.

Big red dot . Click to open the Address Book program, with this person's entry staring you in the face. That's what you'd do if, for example, you wanted to edit the entry.
Phone number . Click it to fill your screen with an enormous version of the phone number that you could see from outer space. The idea here is that it's big enough to see from across the room as you dial the number on your desk phone.
Email address . Click to fire up the Mail program (or whatever email program you use), complete with a fresh outgoing message already addressed to this person. All you have to do is type your message and click Send.
Mailing address . Clicking the mailing address fires up your Web browser and takes you to MapQuest.com, already opened up to a map that reveals the pinpoint location of the specified address. Very, very slick.

5.11.3.2. Calculator

Here's your basic four-function pocket calculator, with one-number memory storage. Begin by clicking it to make activewhich basically means that any typing you do on the number keys get intercepted by this little calculator. (Pressing the number keys is much faster than clicking the onscreen numbers.)

There's not a lot to this calculator; if you need scientific and hexadecimal features, or even square root functions, use the regular Mac OS X Calculator program described on Section 10.2.

5.11.3.3. Calendar

Sure, you can always find out today's date by clicking the clock on your menu bar. But this one is so much nicer looking. And besides, you can use this calendar to look ahead or back. Here's the scheme of things you can click:

The month square, date square, or day-of-the-week letters . Click to collapse the calendar display, hiding the dates to save space. (Click again to reveal the month again.)

Tip: Press Shift as you click to see the effect in slow motion.
Any date square . When the month view is expanded, you can click one of the little date numbers to change the big month/date squares above to match. (Not that you learn much by doing thisclicking Wednesday, June 22 makes the big date squares read "Weds June 22." Ooooh!)
The tiny down/up triangles . Click these buttons at the bottom edge of the calendar to go backward or forward a month at a time.
The tiny little diamond in the middle . Click this button to go back to today's date.

5.11.3.4. Dictionary

Apple has provided Tiger fans with about 65,000 different ways to access the new built-in dictionary/thesaurus (Section 10.6), and here's another one. You click either the word Dictionary or Thesaurus, type the word you want, and press Enter. Instantly, a handy definitions panel drops down to display the appropriate entry. The left/right triangle buttons in the upper left corner let you walk through the most recent lookups you've done.

Tip: Once you've looked up a word, you can look up new words by typing only the first few letters (you don't even have to press Return). The Dictionary or Thesaurus automatically displays the definition for the first matching word.

If you click the button in the lower-left corner, the dictionary panel spins around to reveal its backside , where you see the Oxford American Dictionaries logo. Someday when you're feeling curious , click it. You wind up firing up your Web browser and visiting the Oxford University Press Web page.

Tip: See how the first letter of your word appears in a special rounded tab at the left edge of the panel? If you click that letter, you get to see the word you looked up in its alphabetical context among all the other words in the dictionary. It's a neat way to check for additional word forms, to see if perhaps you've misspelled the word, or to scrabble your way out of a tight situation when you're playing the word game "ghost" with someone.

5.11.3.5. Flight Tracker

This handy widget lets you find out which flights fly between which citiesand if the flight is already en route, shows you where it is on the map, how high it's flying, how fast, and whether or not it's going to be on time.

This may look like a small window, but there's a lot going on here:

Flight Finder . If you're planning a trip, the suite can show you a list of flights that match your itinerary . Use the pop-up menus to specify the arrival and departure cities, and which airline you want to study, if any. (Actually, it's usually faster to type the name of the city into the box, if you know it, or, better yet, its three-digit airport code.) Then click Find Flights, or press Return or Enter.

After a moment, the right side of the screen becomes a scrolling list of flights that match your query. You can see the flight number, the departure and arrival time, and the name of the airline.

This is a great tool when a friend or relative is flying in and you're unsure of the flight number, airline, or arrival time.
Flight Tracker . Most of the time, the status column of the results says "Scheduled," meaning that you're looking at some future flight. Every now and then, however, you get lucky, and it says "en route." This is where things get really fun: double-click that row of results to see the plane's actual position on a national or international map (Figure 5-22).

Tip: If you click the little circled

button before performing a flight search, the panel flips around to reveal the logo of the company that supplies the flight data. Click the logo to open its Web page. Once you've performed a flight search, however, you lose access to the

button. To bring it back, you must close and reopen the widget.

Figure 5-22. Top: Most of the time, Flight Tracker is like a teeny tiny travel agent, capable of showing you which flights connect which cities. But if one of the flights is marked "Enroute," double-click it.
Bottom: You see an actual map of its progress, as shown here. You also get to see its speed, and estimated arrival status (early, late, or on time), and even which terminal it will use upon landing. If you click the plane, you can zoom in on it.

5.11.3.6. iTunes

This glossy-looking controller is a remote control for the iTunes music player. It's intended for people who listen to music while they work all day, and have no greater music-management needs than starting and stopping the music (see Figure 5-23). Of course, you can perform all of the same functions in iTunes itself, in the miniaturized iTunes window, or even using the iTunes Dock icon. But on a Mac with a lot of windows open, with the phone ringing and the baby crying, you may find it quicker to pause the music by hitting F12 and then clicking the Pause button on this widget.

5.11.3.7. Phone Book (aka Yellow Pages)

A Yellow Pages of every business and organization in the entire United States wouldn't be especially compact. In fact, it would probably occupy your entire living room. And yet think of the convenience of having such a thing. You could instantly find the closest Chinese restaurant, hospital, or all-night drugstore, even if you're a laptop-carrying road warrior in a strange city.

Well, now you can. Into the text box, type whatever it is you're looking for, exactly as though it's a heading in the Yellow Pages business directory. You could type drug store, cleaning service, health club, tailor, library , or whatever. Alternatively, click the triangular down-arrow next to this box to see a list of services the widget already knows about.

The widget shoots out the query to the Internet and, after a moment, provides you with a list of local businesses that match, including phone numbers and addresses. (Click the right or left arrow at the bottom of the window to see the next set of results.)

The bits of contact information are clickable, by the way. Click the name of the place to open up a Web page revealing more information, the phone number to enlarge it big enough to see from 50 feet away, or the address to see where this place is on a MapQuest map.

Note: Before Phone Book can show you a list of local businesses, it has to know what you mean by local in other words, where you are.Now, your Mac may already know where you live. It can extract this information from your original Tiger installation, for example, or from the Address Book program (if you've filled in a card for yourself).But if it doesn't seem to know where you areor if you're traveling with a laptopyou have to tell it. Perform any random search using the widget (try Banks, for example). At the bottom of the results window, you'll see the familiar

button. Click it to rotate the widget; on the back, you'll see that you can specify a city and state or zip code, how many listings you want per "page," and how many miles away a business has to be to qualify. Then click Done.

Figure 5-23. The little iTunes widget is filled with clickable areas. (A.) Volume ring. (B.) Next song/previous song. (C.) Play/Stop. (D.) Shuffle (random playback order) on/off. (E.) Loop this song on/off. (F.) Scrollbar (click to jump around in the song). (G.) Click this button to make the widget "flip around." On the backside, you'll see a pop-up menu that lets you change your playlist, as you've created it in iTunes.

5.11.3.8. Stickies

Stickies is a virtual Post-it note that lets you type out random scraps of texta phone number, a Web address, a grocery list, or whatever.

Of course, Mac OS X already comes with a popular Stickies program (Section 10.23.1). So why did Apple duplicate it in Dashboard? Simple: because you can call up this one with a tap on the F12 key, making it faster to open.

On the other hand, this Stickies isn't quite as flexible as the application Stickies. For example, you can't resize the page. And to add a second or a third note, you have to click the + button at the bottom of the screen to reveal the Widget Bar, and then click the Stickies icon for each new page.

On the other other hand, this Stickies isn't quite as bare-bones as you might think. If you click the little button at the bottom right corner, the note spins around to reveal, on the backside, the choice of paper colors, fonts, and font sizes.

5.11.3.9. Stocks

Hey, day traders, this one's for you. This widget lets you build a stock portfolio and watch it rise and fall throughout the day (Figure 5-24).

Figure 5-24. More of Apple's built-in widgets. Clockwise from top left: Translation, Stocks, Tile Game (showing a new graphicin honor of Apple's switch to Intel processorsthat you've dragged in to serve as the puzzle), and Weather.

To set up your portfolio, click the little button at the bottom of the window. The widget flips around, revealing the configuration page on the backside.

Add a stock to your list by typing its name or stock abbreviation into the box at the top; then click the + button, or press Return or Enter. If there's only one possible matchMicrosoft, for examplethe widget adds it to the list instantly. If there's some question about what you typed, or several possible matches, you'll see a pop-up menu listing the alternatives, so you can click the one you want.
Remove a stock from the list by clicking its name and then clicking Remove.

Tip: Ordinarily, the widget displays the ups and downs of each stock as a dollar amount ("+.92" means up 92 cents , for example). But if you turn on "Show change as a percentage," you'll see these changes represented as percentages of their previous values.But why bother? Once you're looking at the actual stock statistics, you can switch between dollar and percentage values just by clicking any one of the red or green up/down status buttons.

Click Done to return to the original stock display. Here's your list of stocks, their current prices (well, current as of 20 minutes ago), and the amount they've changedgreen if they're up, red if they're down. Click a stock's name to see its chart displayed at the bottom. (You control the time scale by clicking one of the little buttons above the graph: "1d" means one day, "3m" means three months, "1y" means one year, and so on.)

Finally, if you double-click the name of the stock, you fly into your Web browser to view a much more detailed stock-analysis page for that stock, courtesy of Quote.com (Lycos Finance).

5.11.3.10. Tile Game

For generations, Microsoft Windows has had its Solitaire gameand for many generations, the Mac had the Tile Game. The idea, of course, is to click the squares of the puzzle, using logic to rearrange them back into the original sequence, so that the put-together photograph reappears.

Tip: The widget starts you out with a handsome photo of a tigerget it?but you can substitute any photo you like.To pull this off, begin by exiting the Dashboard. Go find the photo you prefer (on the desktop or in iPhoto, for example). Now begin dragging it in any direction. While the mouse is still down, press F12 (or whatever your Dashboard keystroke is)and drop the dragged graphic directly on the Tile Game puzzle. You've just replaced the existing graphic with your new one (Figure 5-24).

The first time you use the Tile Game, click inside it to trigger the animated tile-scrambling process. Click a second time to stop the scrambling ; in other words, Apple leaves it to you to decide just how difficult (how scrambled) the puzzle is.

And what should you do if you get frustrated and give up, or you miss the old tiger photo? Just open the Widget Bar and open a fresh copy of the Tile Game.

5.11.3.11. Translation

The next time you travel abroad, plan your trip so that your laptop always has highspeed wireless Internet access wherever you go (yeah, right). You'll be able to use this module to translate your utterancesor those of the nativesto and from 13 languages.

Just choose the language direction you want from the "from" and "to" pop-up menus, and then type the word, sentence , or paragraph into the "Translate From" box.

You don't have to click anything or press any key; just wait a moment. In a flash, the bottom of the window shows the translation, as shown at top left in Figure 5-24. (Don't click the curvy double-headed arrow button to perform the translation; that button means, "swap the To and From languages.")

Of course, these translations are performed by automated software robots on the Web. As a result, they're not nearly as accurate as what you'd get from a paid professional. On the other hand, when you're standing in the middle of a strange city and you don't know the languageand you desperately need to express yourselfwhat Dashboard provides may just be good enough.

Tip: Your first instinct may be to assume that this module is designed for translating things you want to say into the local language. However, you may find it even more useful for translating foreign language paragraphsfrom email or Web pages, for exampleinto your own language so that you can read them.

5.11.3.12. Unit Converter

No matter what units you're trying to convert meters , grams, inches, miles per hour the Unit Converter widget is ready.

From the upper pop-up menu, choose the kind of conversion you want: Temperature, Area, Weight, or whatever. (Take a moment to enjoy the clever graphic at the top of the window that helps identify the measurement you've selected.)

Use the lower pair of pop-up menus to specify which units you want to convert to and from, like Celsius to Fahrenheit. Then type in either the starting or ending measurement. To convert 48 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit, for example, type 48 into the Celsius box.

You don't have to click anything or press any key; the conversion is performed for you instantly and automatically as you type.

Never let it be said that technology isn't marching forward.

Tip: Unit Converter is especially amazing when it comes to currency conversionsfrom pesos to American dollars, for examplebecause it actually does its homework. It goes online to download up-to-the-minute currency rates to ensure that the conversion is accurate.

5.11.3.13. Weather

This widget is, by far, the most famous Dashboard module. It shows a handy current-conditions display for your city (or any other city), and, at your option, even offers a six-day forecast (Figure 5-24, lower left).

Before you get started, the most important step is to click the button at the lower right corner. The widget flips around, and on the back panel, you'll see where you can specify your city and state or zip code. You can also specify whether you prefer degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit, and whether you want the six-day forecast to show both highs and lows (it ordinarily shows only the highs). Click Done.

Now the front of the widget displays the name of your town, today's predicted high and low, the current temperature, and a graphic representation of the sky conditions (sunny, cloudy, rainy, and so on). Click anywhere on this display to expand the panel, revealing the six-day forecast.

Tip: Evidently, the Weather widget team members at Apple were really proud of their artwork. Lest you miss out on seeing all the beautiful weather graphics, they've given you a secret keystroke that reveals all 19 of the gorgeous and witty sky-weather graphics.All you have to do is hold down

and Option as you click repeatedly on the widget. You'll see that, for the town of Nowhere, the weather changes every time you click.

5.11.3.14. World Clock

The value of this analog clock isn't so much that it shows the current time; after all, your menu bar shows that. No, the neat part is that you can open up several of these clocksclick World Clock in the Widget Bar repeatedlyand set each one up to show the time in a different city. The resulting array looks just like the row of clocks in a hotel lobby, international bank, or train station, making you look Swiss and precise.

To specify which city's time appears on the clock, click the button at the lower-right corner. The widget flips around, revealing the pop-up menus that let you choose a continent and city.

5.11.4. More Widgets

Within two months of Tiger's release, nearly a thousand new widgets, written by other people, were already available on the Web. To see Apple's current list of goodies , click the More Widgets button that appears whenever the Widgets Bar is exposed. That takes you to the Apple Dashboard downloads page. (Alternatively, check a Mac-downloads Web site like www. versiontracker .com for an even more complete selection.)

Some of the most intriguing widget offerings include the Yahoo Local Traffic widget (gives you the traffic conditions in your area), Air Traffic Control (identifies wireless AirPort base stations within range of your laptop), and TV Tracker (shows you could be watching on TV right now instead of working). There are also FedEx package trackers, joke-of-the-day widgets, comic-strip-of-the-day widgets, and many other varieties (see Figure 5-25).

5.11.4.1. Installing a widget

When you download a widget, Tiger is smart enough to install it automatically. As shown in Figure 5-25 at top, Dashboard opens automatically, with the new widget displayed, so you can get right to work playing with it. If you like how it works, you can add it to your collection by clicking Install.

Behind the scenes, however, Tiger has copied it into your Home Library Widgets folder. Whats important to notice here is that only you will see that Dashboard widget, because it's been copied into the Widgets folder of your account . Anyone else who has accounts on this Mac won't see it.

Unless, of course, you copy or move that widget into the Library Widgets folder (that is, begin with the Library folder in your main hard drive window). The contents of that Widgets folder are available to all account holders.

Figure 5-25. Top: Starting in Mac OS X 10.4.2, Apple introduced a Test Drive mode for newly downloaded widgets: a way to play with them before you actually commit to adding them to your system. That's much safer than the fully automatic installation system of earlier versions, which posed a theoretical security riska bad guy could design a virus or spyware program to look like a widget.
Bottom: Not all good things come from Apple. Here's a handful of neat widgets written by other people. Clockwise from top left: Rabbit Radio (tunes in National Public Radio stations, coast to coast ); Magic Widget (click for answers to probing yes-or-no questions); Day in History; and SunlitEarth (shows where the sun's light is striking our planet at this exact moment).

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