Making Dashboard Widgets from Web Pages

OK, I admit I’ve been a little harsh with Leopard lately. Hatin’ on it, even. It’s just that Apple set such a high bar with Tiger. And there are just enough small annoyances to really sour me while overlooking some of the nifty new things which, yes, I’d miss if I reverted to Tiger. So, I thought maybe I should focus on some positive things once in a while.

Here’s something really neat you can do with Leopard - turn any portion of a web page into your very own Dashboard widget.

If you’ve not used Dashboard widgets before, they’re kinda like mini-applications that you can have pop-up on your desktop whenever you want. They’re not programs in the traditional sense of the word, with menus and file saving and so forth. Rather, they’re single-purpose little gadgets with limited configuration options. The weather widget, for example, lets you put in your location by zip code, and that’s it. I use the following widgets: weather (duh), the Converter (which lets you convert currencies, weight, speed, temperature, time and other units - very useful), an iTunes controller, and a neat little timer which is handy for keeping track of freelance work. Oh, and the Guitar Chords widget. There are also some fun little game widgets. Apple’s site has tons of free ones you can download. While getting this link to the download page for ya, I saw a new widget called “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Countdown.” It does exactly what it says.

Widgets have been around since 10.4. But with 10.5, you can now roll your own Dashboard widgets from Web pages. You gotta use Safari, of course. But basically, it’s as easy as surfing to a page, selecting part of it, and telling Safari to widget-ize it. Apple calls it “Web Clips.”

This is most useful for pages that display the same type of information in the same location each time. I created one for my Cook Forest Online Webcam page, for example. I know that the Webcam’s current photo is always shown on the same page, at the same location. After turning it into a widget, I don’t need to fire up Safari and visit the Web page to see the most recent photo. I can just invoke Dashboard, and there’s the latest Webcam image displayed in my very own widget.

Setting up the Web Clip to become a widget:



What this Web page looks like in widget-format, along with other widgets on my desktop:



Other uses might include stock ticker areas, “picture of the day” web pages, headline areas, and so forth. Here’s Apple’s description:

“Now you can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget. Click the Web Clip button next to the address field in Safari and select exactly what you want your new widget to display. Then click Add, and Safari sends your Web Clip widget to Dashboard, where you can view it alongside your other widgets. You can even customize its border using built-in styles on the back of the widget. Your Web Clip widget is “live” and will update as frequently as the page from which it came.”

If you don’t have the Web Clip button showing in Safari, go to the File / Open in Dashbord menu to do the same. The Web Clip button doesn’t show for me, for some reason; I don’t remember ever turning it off or anything.

There you have it. If you’ve never really messed around with widgets, then you probably won’t understand the value of Web Clips. But now you’ve got some new stuff to try out. What are you waiting for? Go geek out awhile!