Leopard: DIY Web widgets
November 1st, 2007 at 3:00 PM - Tips by Jeff Gamet
Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X 10.4 gave us a cool way to keep track of information online. Unless you had a little programming skill, however, you couldnit create your own custom widgets. Mac OS X 10.5 changes that.
If you want to create your own Dashboard widget to monitor a specific Web site, Leopardis Safari 3 makes it easy. Hereis what to do:
- Launch Safari. It should be hiding in your Dock and also in your Applications folder.
- Open a Web site that has something you want to monitor. I decided to make my own Apple stock watch widget from TMOis apple stock quote feature.
- Click the Open this page in Dashboard button.
- Select the part of the Web page you want to monitor. The highlight box includes handles, so you can resize it to include all of the content you want. I kept my highlight box small since I only needed the stock quote part from the TMO site.
- Click the Add button.
![]() Click Safariis Dashboard button to create your own widget. |
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![]() Highlight the part of the Web page you want in your widget. |
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Dashboard will automatically launch and display the widget you just created. You can customize the widget boarder by clicking the info button in your widgetis lower right corner.
![]() One home grown AAPL stock widget. |
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Be sure to select Web site parts that include information that changes, otherwise your widget will be pretty boring. I chose regularly updated stock information, but I could have also chosen the TMO Hot Topics section, or maybe a regularly updated video from another Web site.
Also, Safariis Web widgets arenit designed to be modified, just easy to create. If you want to design highly customized widgets, take a look at the Xcode development tools that ship with Mac OS X installer discs. Youill find everything you need -- including sample code -- to build your own widgets.
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