Dashboard widget detection coming to Safari?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
A forthcoming version of Apple Computer's Safari Web browser may automatically detect the presence of Dashboard widgets on a website, according to developers who've located evidence of such a feature in an unreleased version of Mac OS X "Tiger."



Although it's unclear in which build the evidence first appeared, developers have uncovered a set of Dashboard-skinned interface buttons in a version of Safari under development as part of the yet-to-be-released Mac OS X 10.4.3 system update.



As of the latest Mac OS X 10.4.3 pre-release -- build 8F28 reportedly seeded last week -- the buttons appear inaccessible from the Safari application and instead lay idle and hidden in the application's resources. Therefore it's also unclear whether Apple plans to enable Safari to detect widgets in the same fashion it does RSS feeds, or allow the browser to interface with Dashboard in some other way.



Judging by the buttons, which are designed to be placed in Safari's address bar, developers speculate they will eventually let users to add widgets to the Dashboard without leaving their browser window. The icons sport the dashboard logo and color scheme, as well as plus sign.



The popularity of widgets has been on the rise ever since Apple built the functionality into the Mac OS X operating system as Dashboard in late April. Yahoo liked the idea so much that they following suit by acquiring Konfabulator, originally a Mac OS X widget application and undeniably Apple's inspiration for the feature.



Both Apple and Yahoo now host galleries containing over a thousand authorized and tested widgets for their respective widget applications.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 24
    With locked bookmarks you can now organize your porn on your family computer. Handy. In two ways.



    EDIT: For something useful:



    Or, in seriousness, browsing through other user's bookmarks... as in if they are locked or not (viewable).
  • Reply 2 of 24
    arnelarnel Posts: 103member
    I think the locked bookmarks icon is for when parental controls are turned on - you have to authenticate to be able to access the bookmarks window. That dashboard button is intriguing, though. Too big to fit in the address bar or the status bar...



    Neil.

    a.k.a. Arnel
  • Reply 3 of 24
    I do not see why apple would put the add widget thing. It seems like they are asking for security issues and people accidentally clicking something.



    As for the bookmarks, it would be nice to not have to type in the name of the porn sites every tiem :-)
  • Reply 4 of 24
    arnelarnel Posts: 103member
    Looking at it closer, it appears to be a toolbar button. Like Jwink, I can't imagine a "download widget" button being particularly useful (they aren't *that* prevalent!), so it's got me thinking...



    What if it's for bringing up a widget over the current web page? I can imagine that being much more useful - popping a tracking number into the package tracker widget, or converting currencies without having to pop back and forth between Safari and the dashboard all the time.



    Thoughts?



    Neil.

    a.k.a. Arnel
  • Reply 5 of 24
    It's really good how apple actually releases bonus feaured updates, instead of just bug fixes.



    This will be a good one too.
  • Reply 6 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AppleInsider

    Yahoo liked the idea so much that they following suit by acquiring Konfabulator, originally a Mac OS X widget application and undeniably Apple's inspiration for the feature.



    How are you so sure that Yahoo is "following suit" i.e. they were not interested even before Apple created Dashboard?
  • Reply 7 of 24
    Maybe it's a "Check .Mac to see if the promised member widgets are available yet" button. \
  • Reply 8 of 24
    After suffering through the rush job we call "Tiger," it would be mighty nice of Apple to not only fix the 500 bugs they have on tap for us, but throw in some nice new features too.



    I spent 200 bucks on Tiger for the Family Pack, and given Tiger's bugginess, I feel like I bought a Microsoft product.



    Tabs in iChat alone would be well worth the pain. Well, kinda.
  • Reply 9 of 24
    celcocelco Posts: 211member
    [QUOTE]Originally posted by BWhaler

    [B]After suffering through the rush job we call "Tiger," it would be mighty nice of Apple to not only fix the 500 bugs they have on tap for us, but throw in some nice new features too.



    I spent 200 bucks on Tiger for the Family Pack, and given Tiger's bugginess, I feel like I bought a Microsoft product.





    Awwww. poor you. Are you sufffering? ....HUH? What drugs are you on? Tiger rocks. Plain and simple. I for one cannot live without spotlight and dashboard ( albeit I had konfabulator ) But to compare Tiger to a MS product deserves a whack. Give apple credit dude.., its the most stable and ADVANCED OS out there. Compared to microshit i'll just shut up and thank god that we even have Tiger and am VERY grateful that whingers don't run Apple GIVE THEM TIME DUDE. Apple is a company... and has limitations. I think we all ask too much sometimes from our fav fruit co. In the words of Massive Attack... JUST BE GRATEFUL.
  • Reply 10 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Arnel

    Looking at it closer, it appears to be a toolbar button. Like Jwink, I can't imagine a "download widget" button being particularly useful (they aren't *that* prevalent!), so it's got me thinking...



    What if it's for bringing up a widget over the current web page? I can imagine that being much more useful - popping a tracking number into the package tracker widget, or converting currencies without having to pop back and forth between Safari and the dashboard all the time.



    Thoughts?



    Neil.

    a.k.a. Arnel




    That sounds cool, but my first thought was that it would work like the RSS "button" on the tool bar. An easy one-click method of downloading a useful widget, nothing more.
  • Reply 11 of 24
    louzerlouzer Posts: 1,054member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Celco

    Awwww. poor you. Are you sufffering? ....HUH? What drugs are you on? Tiger rocks. Plain and simple. I for one cannot live without spotlight and dashboard ( albeit I had konfabulator ) But to compare Tiger to a MS product deserves a whack. Give apple credit dude.., its the most stable and ADVANCED OS out there.







    Yeah, really dude! Anyone who has problems with Tiger must be smoking something bad. There aren't any bugs in it at all. In fact, all those "bug fixes" they've released so far really aren't fixing anything. Its to make those people who always wait for version .1 or .2 to finally buy the software.



    And it wasn't rushed. In fact, it was just on time. I know this because Apple said it would be released 1H 2005 and it was. Sure, there's probably some "louzers" out there complaining about Spotlight being half-done, with no way to turn it off, no direct way to rebuild the indexes because it only appears to find half your files, no way for it to handle databases (such that Apple had to go to the stupidity of changing their mail database to store each mail as a separate file - great, that's the way they did it back in the early 90s!), and marking a directory as 'private' makes searching for a file a pleasurable experience (esp if you're into S&M), trying to type in text into the spotlight causes it to search for matches on EVERY character, which basically slows entering the next character (esp. on a large drive with lots of files).



    And dashboard was perfect out of the box. OK, so it was full of security issues, but that was really a safari problem. And no one could have envisioned that someone might want a way to manage their widgets? And who doesn't like having a bunch of widgets that can all be visible at once, or none visible. No one would want a widget to be always visible. Say, like the Calculator widget. No one uses a calculator while working in applications like Excel or Word or the like.



    Quote:

    Compared to microshit i'll just shut up and thank god that we even have Tiger and am VERY grateful that whingers don't run Apple GIVE THEM TIME DUDE. Apple is a company... and has limitations. I think we all ask too much sometimes from our fav fruit co. In the words of Massive Attack... JUST BE GRATEFUL.



    That's right. If it wasn't for Tigers bugs and unfinished features, you'd still be using Panther! Just let Apple release whatever crap they want, because they're just a company. We shouldn't expect anything from them. And since they know there's idiots like Celco who'll just buy anything they sell, they don't need to produce quality products. Bugs are OK, because they just need time to fix them (and we all know they'd never get fixed until they released the OS, so it was important that they released it as soon as possible).



    Oh, and in the words of my former ex-cellmate. Just be grateful (that I don't kill you, now bend over and enjoy).
  • Reply 12 of 24
    A couple questions for those of you who have complaints about Tiger: #1) How many of you purchased a new computer, forcing you to use Tiger? #2)_How many of you blindly purchased Tiger before considering that there may be bugs, without doing any prior research wether your applications and peripherals were compatible with Tiger?



    If your answer is #1) I'm almost sorry for you... if you replaced an aging machine because it enhanced your production or your previous computer didn't work, but If you purchased a new computer just to have a new computer then you should have done you homework first.



    If your answer is #2) Please see previous sentence about doing your homework.
  • Reply 13 of 24
    Everyone wants to place the blame on everyone else, but not where it truly belongs. Apple didn't upgrade your computer late one night while you were sleeping. They may have released Tiger with bugs, but you purchased the new computer with Tiger pre-installed or purchased Tiger and upgraded your computer by your own free choice.
  • Reply 14 of 24
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by fahlman

    #1) How many of you purchased a new computer, forcing you to use Tiger?



    I bought a rev. B iMac G5 but that's never made me feel "forced" to use Tiger since my choice was completely intentional.

    Quote:

    If your answer is #1) I'm almost sorry for you... if you replaced an aging machine because it enhanced your production or your previous computer didn't work, but If you purchased a new computer just to have a new computer then you should have done you homework first.



    I paid about the same for the new iMac with Tiger as I sold my old iMac for with Panther. Upgrading the hardware and OS was clearly the better deal than eventually buying Tiger for the rev A.



    I agree that Tiger was released with too many problems but the bugs I've encountered directly (or avoid because I've heard about them) have easily been offset by its "enhanced productivity" for what I do. So there's no reason to feel almost or at all sorry for me.



    . . .



    A sobering reality nowadays is that anyone who takes Apple's (or most anyone else's) product quality and testing for granted risks being disappointed. Hopefully something motivates Apple to regain at least some of the genuine higher standards that it seems to have lost or misplaced, which pessimistically may be unlikely without feeling some pain.
  • Reply 15 of 24
    louzerlouzer Posts: 1,054member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by fahlman

    A couple questions for those of you who have complaints about Tiger: #1) How many of you purchased a new computer, forcing you to use Tiger? #2)_How many of you blindly purchased Tiger before considering that there may be bugs, without doing any prior research wether your applications and peripherals were compatible with Tiger?



    If your answer is #1) I'm almost sorry for you... if you replaced an aging machine because it enhanced your production or your previous computer didn't work, but If you purchased a new computer just to have a new computer then you should have done you homework first.



    If your answer is #2) Please see previous sentence about doing your homework.




    That's right. The consumers, not Apple, were the culprits. Apple didn't force the consumers to buy the defective product. Therefore they shouldn't be called out to task about it. Its those blasted idiots who believed the hype and bought the grand new OS because they actually thought that, because it was released, it would work.



    Oh, and based on this logic, MS has absolutely no blame for any and all security holes in their software. If there's a problem, you should've known better then to use the software. Thus MS isn't the problem, its the billions of windows users.



    Hey, this is fun. Who else can we take the blame from?
  • Reply 16 of 24
    I'm puzzled what bugs people find that are major enough to upset their lives.



    I've had OSX since 10.1 and I've only ever had very minor niggles. So much so that I can't think of any offhand. No show stoppers anyway.



    The only Apple bug that annoys me is iPhoto5 which IME is just not useable anywhere past 3000 photos. iPhoto 4 worked better.



    Certainly some things could be implemented better and Apple's UI standards indifference annoys me immensely, atleast until I installed Iridium, but Tiger is definitely worth the upgrade over Panther even from day 1.
  • Reply 17 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by curiousuburb

    Maybe it's a "Check .Mac to see if the promised member widgets are available yet" button. \



    Promised? I think you're confused between rumors and announcements.
  • Reply 18 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by coolfactor

    Promised? I think you're confused between rumors and announcements.



    Well, which does "Exclusive Widgets for .Mac members coming soon!" posted on the .Mac page fall under?
  • Reply 19 of 24
    IIRC, someone at some point some rumor site ( i think Think Secret) that they were being developed by an intern and weren;t really with Apple's support so there is no rush
  • Reply 20 of 24
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by aegisdesign

    The only Apple bug that annoys me is iPhoto5 which IME is just not useable anywhere past 3000 photos.



    iPhoto 5 has become my achilles heel on OS X. It first started having semi-random beachballs soon after importing photos from my wife's Canon SD200, originally on my iMac then later on her eMac. I can consistently recreate it by launching iPhoto then immediately duplicating an image; the next action causes a beachball. I've done almost everything I can think of to permanently repair it (beyond what anyone's suggested when I've asked for help) and have even had temporary success. But the *@#$! problem eventually (and mysteriously) reappears, sometimes without having imported any new photos. There are a few more things left to try but since they're the most time-consuming I'm still procrastinating. My hunch is something in the image files from the SD200 corrupts the library, beyond what a rebuild is capable of fixing.
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