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May 29, 2007

software

Who uses widgets?

Posted May. 29, ’07, 12:30 PM PT by Pat Nakajima
Category | Software

One of the only biggest things to look forward to in Leopard will be the enhancements to the dashboard, especially the webclip widget which allows you to create a widget from a portion of a web page. There are already some widgets that mimic this behavior but their abilities are rather limited. For example, if you have a web page that requires login that you wish to widgetize, you’re plumb out of luck. Hopefully, the web clip widget will remedy this shortcoming.

Personally, my use of widgets fell off exponentially from the time I first came to OS X. For a time, my dashboard was totally bare, though I have started to come around a bit. At this point, my dashboard contains three widgets: the calculator, the phenomonal iStat nano, and a nice timer widget called Minutes. I like having a calculator available to me at all times, and it’s nice to be able to see how my system is doing at the press of a button. The countdown widget was somewhat of an impulse download, though I’ve found myself using it here and there, and it bears a relatively small footprint.

I’m curious to see if there’s anything I’m missing, and at this point I’d like to tap the collective wisdom of the MacUser readership. Do you have any widgets that you can’t live without?


29 Comments

nick said:

i totally buy into the widget thing. i currently have:

(cant live without)
istat nano
calculator
dictionary
calendar

(could survive without)
weather
wikipedia search
display sleep button

(overkill)
boston apple store webcam

(on occasion)
airport radar
itunes connection monitor


May 29, 2007 1:08 PM
nick said:

i totally buy into the widget thing. i currently have:

(cant live without)
istat nano
calculator
dictionary
calendar

(could survive without)
weather
wikipedia search
display sleep button

(overkill)
boston apple store webcam

(on occasion)
airport radar
itunes connection monitor


May 29, 2007 1:08 PM
vdot90 Author Profile Page said:

I use the Clock and Weather widgets all the time. Like, all the time. And it's nice to have the dictionary at a press of a button too.

May 29, 2007 1:17 PM
Steph said:

Stickies
They always handy with quick notes.

May 29, 2007 1:18 PM
Albert Solene said:

I would use a better calendar widget if I could find one.

May 29, 2007 1:21 PM
Nicolaj said:

Yes, I constantly use the unit converter for Metric/US conversion when researching food related stuff, and currency conversion when shopping online (I live in Sweden, make my money in Denmark and shop in US and UK web stores, so this is a handy tool for me indeed).

I also find myself constantly using the Dictionary and Stickies. I like the widget version of the latter better because it's out of the way when I don't need it.

I also use the weather widget a lot, as well as a bunch of the clock widgets, set to different time zones so I know if my friends around the world just woke up or came home from work when they log onto Skype.

May 29, 2007 1:22 PM
Mehdi said:

i use minutes, clocks from the cities where i have friends, weather(u can't live without it in paris), translator, oxford dictionary, calender

May 29, 2007 1:23 PM
Moe said:

I have weather, istat nano and the calculator widgets activated at all times. Other than that, no need for any others.

May 29, 2007 1:23 PM
Dave-O said:

Ditto on weather and dictionary. I also like the Wikipedia widget. You've got to get yourself an RPN calculator.

May 29, 2007 1:26 PM
Rory Author Profile Page said:

I barely used Dashboard at first, but I've grown into it. I'm currently using:

iStat Pro
Calculator
Weather
Dictionary
Fetch (for drag-and-drop uploading to my site's dumping ground for random stuff)
Stickies

May 29, 2007 1:33 PM
Equinox said:

Uff, I've been using those damn widgets since the day I got the OS.

These are the one that I use, or that are in the screen:

Calendar
iTunes
[many] stickes
ESPN [Baseball season's on]
Dictionary
Weather
Radar in Motion ['Cuz Weather isn't enough]
Chia pet
and the clock.

And tha's about it.

May 29, 2007 1:41 PM
pos said:

I use dashboard all the time, mainly locker' to quickly hide my screen.

May 29, 2007 2:12 PM
Yorktown said:

I don't use Widgets. If I'm bored and am dire for some extra decoration, I'll have some fun organizing them. When I go to the Activity Monitor and notice how much ram and CPU it eats away, I prefer to conserve the resources and go on to something else even though I have plenty to spare when I'm not in Final Cut or Soundtrack

May 29, 2007 2:31 PM
John Wilson said:

I have gradually grown to use a lot of widgets and now could not do without them.
I use iCal Events and DoBeDo to see my upcoming iCal events and ToDo's in Dashboard, I use the Weather and Rader in Motion widgets, the excellent MLB standings and MLB schedule widgets, and of course the dictionary, yellow & white pages, calander, and calculator.

May 29, 2007 2:33 PM
Stephen W. Carson said:

The killer widget: Delivery Status. Tracks your packages for you. Impeccable aesthetics and truly useful functionality.

http://mikepiontek.com/software/mac/delivery-status.html

May 29, 2007 2:38 PM
Paul said:

I disabled widgets the minute I accidentally hit a key and all that stuff was all over the screen. It looked a bit like my yahoo page but a lot more messy.

May 29, 2007 2:41 PM
Michael Long said:

Weather for quick forecasts and the answer to how hot/cold is it going to be, and the Calendar widget.

And SlothCam tuned to Times Square just for the heck of it.

May 29, 2007 2:46 PM
Jack said:

At first I thought widgets were kinda neat. Now I think they are pretty pointless. Currently i have I stat pro running. I use the currency converter and the translator occasionally. I turn on the mirror widget to get my mac to quit whining. That's it. I'm curretnly wondering if there is a way to get rid of the whole thing actually.

May 29, 2007 3:07 PM
Andreas Creten said:

I can't live without the translation widget.

I also use these:
- Callwave SMS widget
- Calculator
- Weather widget ( x 3)
- World Clock ( x 2)
- Telemeter (a widget from my ISP)

May 29, 2007 3:10 PM
Teilas Author Profile Page said:

@Jack: the Dashboard isn't launched until you actually invoke it, so if you never press F12 it's as good as non-existent. In System Preferences you can choose to have no hotkey for Dashboard.

I use Google's Gmail widget, Punk (gives the ratings of movies at the IMdB), Weather, Dictionary/Thesaurus, Calculator, Stickies (for short notes) and WikityWidget (for longer notes). Occasionally I pull up the Unit Converter to convert currency or Symbol Caddy to look up the HTML codes for various symbols. While I could certainly live without the Dashboard, it saves me quite a lot of time that would otherwise be spent in a web browser. I look forward to additional enhancements in Leopard.

May 29, 2007 3:35 PM
Mark! said:

I love having the dictionary so accessible. I also use the calculator, converter, calendar and 2 weather widgets. iStat nano is there too, along with a traffic indicator, which is pretty handy sometimes. I keep the clock set to London time so I know whether I should expect certain folks in a favorite forum to be online.

May 29, 2007 5:05 PM
wesg said:

As with other users who are interested in the operation of their system, I use iStat Nano for monitoring my MacBook, but also have:

2 weather widgets - for University and home
stickies - for random messages and reminders
calculator
unit converter occasionally

May 29, 2007 5:08 PM
Ron Evry said:

I love to use the stock price widget for quick looks at how my munificent investments are doing throughout the day. The local weather and the calendar comes in handy, and I am always making use of the thesaurus...

May 29, 2007 7:18 PM
Neil Anderson said:

EasyEnvelopes
NHL
Wimic

May 29, 2007 9:30 PM
Matt said:

Dashboard disabled on every Mac owned or used. No interest in these whatsoever. I find the mishmash of GUI annoying; they're potential security risks (to the point where Apple must validate them a couple of times a day, sneaking into your system for a report); some consume much too much in the way of system resources; and, by and large, they're just plain ugly. There are utilities and apps that do everything needed, why is this blight needed on OS X? Isn't the broken Finder enough?

May 29, 2007 10:03 PM
Andrew Hedges said:

I may be biased because I've built quite a few widgets, but I do rely on several including the Dockstar widget, Mail Checker, Calculator, Weather, Stocks, Ma.gnolia Ma.rker, Currency Converter, Unit Converter, GetDilbert & PHPfr (the last two being ones I built). Yeah, it chews a lot of resources, but I love getting info overload at a glance!

May 30, 2007 3:52 AM
Scott said:

I like the Dashboard and use the following...

Calendar
World Clock
Unit Converter
Stickies
WeatherBug...more accurate and more localized than the stock widget

May 30, 2007 4:26 AM
Albert Solene said:

Interested that so many people use the weather widget. The weather widget for Sydney bears *no resemblance whatever* to reality. For example, it says that today's max/min were 33/18 deg. C. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology (www.bom.gov.au) shows that it is currently 12 deg. C., and it almost got to 20 earlier today.

May 30, 2007 5:17 AM
Arjan said:

Nope.

Dashboard disabled on every Mac owned or used.

May 30, 2007 11:12 AM

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