When the Mac operating system OS X 10.4 (aka “Tiger”) was first announced, there were two things that I instantly fell in love with: Automator and Dashboard. While Automator is great when you really want to geek out, Dashboard is a great companion for new and veteran users of the Mac.

Dashboard is a semi-transparent “layer” of the operating system that contains small, self-contained applications called “widgets.” These widgets allow you to do everything from convert currency to check the local weather. With thousands of widgets available — and even the ability to create your own — Dashboard can be a very useful (and powerful) tool for a new Mac owner.

How to View Dashboard

One of the best features of Dashboard is how it sits quietly in the background until you ask for it — and there are multiple ways to ask. The easiest way is the keyboard shortcut, which depends on your keyboard configuration. For my iMac the shortcut is F12 (there’s a small picture of a speedometer). For the new unibody MacBook it’s Fn+F12 (the function key bypasses the default volume controls). Of course, these default keyboard shortcuts can be customized in System Preferences.

You can also access Dashboard by creating a “hot corner” that will activate Dashboard when you hover your mouse over the corner of your choice. You can set up a hot corner by going to Preferences and navigating to the Desktop and Screen Saver pane.

And finally, you can access Dashboard by clicking on the icon in your dock. If you’ve removed it then you can easily find Dashboard in your Applications folder where you can drag it back into the dock for easy access.

How to Use Dashboard

Once you’ve activated Dashboard, the real fun begins. If you’re looking at Dashboard for the first time, you’ll most likely notice a handful of the 20 widgets that are included with Dashboard (if I counted correctly). Luckily, with each update to the operating system Apple adds a few new widgets (most recently Movies and Web Clip) so the true Mac fans don’t get bored.

But the widgets you see on the screen are only a few of these built-in widgets. In order to see the rest, click on the small “plus” button in the lower left-hand corner.

A small toolbar will pop out containing all the widgets installed on your computer and available for use.

To add a widget to Dashboard simply single-click or drag the widget onto the screen. This will add an instance of the widget to Dashboard. I say “instance” because each widget is self contained — meaning you can run multiple copies of your favorite widgets at the same time. This is especially useful when placing multiple sticky notes or for tracking multiple time zones.

Done with a widget? While the Dashboard toolbar is open you’ll see each widget has a small ‘X’ in the upper left-hand corner. Simply click and the widget will vanish. You can also use Dashboard’s “Manage Widgets” feature, but I find it easier to simply click and disable the ones you don’t want.

Now when you first add the World Clock widget you may not be too impressed that it only shows the local time in Cupertino, California. The World Clock, along with most widgets, are customizable. When you hover over a widget you’ll see a small ‘i‘ appear (see above screenshot). Clicking on that icon will bring up additional information about the widget, as well as any options that you can tweak.

Dashboard Widget Resources

If you like the functionality of Dashboard you’re in luck… there are hundreds if not thousands of Dashboard widgets available. New ones are being developed every day too — in fact many popular applications include a Dashboard widget version of their program in the installation package and many websites have created specialized widgets for their RSS feeds and other information.

One of the largest sources of widgets is Apple’s own download page. There you will find more widgets than you’ll know what to do with. In addition to browsing the various categories (games, sports, news) you can see the Top 50 list or the most recently added widgets.

Dashboardwidgets.com also has a strong collection of widgets in addition to forums and development guides (if you’re inclined to begin creating your own widgets). The site allows you to sort by date, downloads, or rating which is very helpful in finding the most popular widgets.

How to Install or Remove Widgets

Once you’ve downloaded your favorite widgets, the next step is to install them. And in true Apple fashion, installation is the easiest part. After downloading your widget, simply double-click on the icon and you’ll see a prompt asking you if you’d like to install the widget. Click install and Dashboard will open and place your widget in temporary “test drive” mode where you can use the widget before actually keeping it on your Dashboard. If you click delete while in “test drive” mode then the widget is moved to the trash never to be heard from again.

As mentioned above, if you don’t want to use a widget anymore, simply click the small ‘X’ in the upper corner and it will be out of sight. But if you want to remove the widget from even coming up as an option in your Dashboard toolbar, then navigate to to /Library/Widgets for Apple original widgets or ~/Library/Widgets for your own user folder. Then simply drag the widget into the trash.

Just Getting Started

If you enjoyed this introduction to Dashboard then check back soon for a future post on more advanced features and tricks — like moving widgets to your desktop and syncing your widgets with Mobile Me.

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As you do your holiday decorating this year, don’t forget to trick out your Mac, too. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier than hauling out heavy decorations or hanging 40 miles of outdoor lights in sub-zero temperatures.

I am always amazed at the creative widgets people devise and create for the holidays, and this year is no exception. Have a look at some of the festive widgets, games, and goodies that commemorate this holiday season.

• My favorite this year is Snow in the Dashboard. It’s not a particularly useful widget, of course, since it doesn’t do anything but make light snow fall across your dashboard. Since I live in Florida, though, it’s as close to the white stuff as I’m likely to get this December.
• If you’re looking for computer-based games, there are plenty of fun ones to choose from that will get you in the holiday spirit. I could try a different one every day and still not be done in time for Christmas, but I gave a few of them a whirl and found Christmas Swap and Christmas Crisis are the best bets if you’re looking for a little mindless fun. The former tests your reflexes and keeps your brain sharp, while the latter is just a fun arcade-type game.
• Children all over the world play the Dreidel Game during Hanukkah. This year, treat your kids to a version that’s played on an iPhone or iPod touch. Same great game and same great fun as when played with a real dreidel, but this one has a 21st-centruy slant. Though the Dreidel Game won’t help you trick out your Mac, it’s still a fun little app that you won’t want to overlook.
• Want to know just how many shopping days you have left before you’re out of time and have to show up at the company party with a re-gifted fruitcake? Put this Christmas Countdown on your Dashboard as a gentle reminder, or for a quick answer to your kids’ constant question, “How long until Santa comes?”
• If you really don’t feel like hanging lights all over your house, just string them across your monitor instead. NightLights Screensaver can be customized with mini or novelty lights and even lets you choose whether to let them randomly blink or remain lit . For a really festive screensaver, try 3D Christmas or Christmas Village.
• Speaking of lights, there’s a really neat Kinara widget that lets users light seven virtual candles in honor of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa. Though the widget is free to download, it’s creators request users consider a donation to the ECOLIFE Foundation.

Have you found other cool holiday downloads and apps for your Mac? Tell me about them in the comments.

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The Dashboard was one of the marquee new features in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger when it was introduced in the spring of 2005 — a sort of Desktop alternate universe accessed through the Dock as a home and interface for an assortment of mini-applications and utilities called Widgets.

Those who liked it, liked it a lot, it seems. Hundreds of Dashboard Widgets have been developed by third-parties in addition to the variety bundled with OS X by Apple.

Personally, I’ve never really warmed to the Dashboard, and rarely use it — by “rarely” I mean a frequency of probably less than once a month on average, and there is no Dashboard Widget I would really miss having available.

On the other hand, Dashboard is something of a resources hog, and being a user of older, low-end hardware, I begrudge the amounts of RAM, processor cycles, and swapfile access that get absorbed by the Dashboard. For example, the old Pismo PowerBook I’m typing this article on has a 550 MHz G4 processor and just 576 MB of RAM, and my most powerful Mac at this time is a 2004 vintage 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook with a still-modest by today’s standards 1.5 GB of RAM. It would be great if Apple had provided the option to manually quit the Dashboard in OS X, but for whatever reason, they didn’t.

Fortunately, it’s still not that difficult to disable the Dashboard and free up those resources, and in fact if you take a minute or two to download a little utility called DashQuit, it’s super-simple.

Just install the DashQuit Widget, click on the Stop button, confirm your intention to quit Dashboard, and it will go dormant as the Dock quits and relaunches. To re-enable the Dashboard, just open it by clicking on Dashboard or its icon in the Dock and it wakes up again. Simple, convenient, and painless.

When DashQuit launches it computes the percentage of memory (RAM) that Dashboard is using and displays it in the little screen. Here’s the readout on my Pismo running OS 10.4.11 Tiger — a whopping 18.3 percent of memory being sucked up by a feature I virtually never use.

There are three versions of DashQuit — all of which are quite small:

• 3.0 for Leopard (48.9k)
• 2.1 for Tiger (130k)
• 1.0 for Tiger (322k)

At the low, low cost of free, I highly recommend this…especially if you’re not a frequent Dashboard user, and running less than cutting-edge hardware.

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Fortunately you now can waste your day away doing madlibs right on your Mac thanks to the MadLibs widget!

It includes 23 different madlib stories to do, many of which are Apple or computer related.

Download the widget, do some madlibs, and post them in the comments.

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So that leads me to ask, what widgets can you not live without? Here are some of mine:

Ta-da List

With everything I’ve got going on, to-do lists are essential for me. It seems that no matter how on top of things I am, I always forget something. The great folks at 37signals have created Ta-da List, a free online aplication that you can use to create to-do lists. It’s a great app, but sometimes navigating to my lists in the browser is just too much work. Fortunately, Keegan Jones has created the Ta-da Lists Widget to save me the trouble.

Junior Mint

I love looking the stats for my other blog, and Shaun Inman’s Mint is the tops in my book. But most of the time I’m just interested in page views and unique visits, so looking at the entire Mint interface can be a bit of an overload. Having Junior Mint (you’ll need to login with your Mint credentials to download) on my Dashboard gives me just the info I want. Plus, if your traffic sucks for one day, you can be a bit more positive and look at the big picture.

Whooppee Cushion Widget

Sometimes when it’s quiet in the office, I have to break the silence. Or better yet, when a nearby project manager is sweating it out on the phone with a displeased client, I need to make the situation more bearable. At those times I crank up my volume, go to Jacob Rath’s Whooppee Cushion Widget, and rip a wonderful fart sound through the office. It may be juvenile, but there’s no replacement for toilet humor!

So what about you guys? What widgets can you not live without?

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