NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community - NZMac.com Dashboard widget v0.2!

NZMac.com Dashboard widget v0.2!

Written by Philip Roy

Sunday, 08 May 2005

Help! I'm really pleased to announce...and really amazed that I got it to actually work...a dashboard widget for use with this site, featuring the ability to view news, forum and event calendar feeds. But at version 0.2, I've done about as much as I can and now would welcome any support from the NZ Mac community.

I'm not a coder at all. I'm a hacker...and not in the cool "can find his way into any system" kind of way, but just someone that can read other people's code, change it a bit and get it working. And in many respects, that's what this widget represents.

There's a lot that I would like to see happen with the widget, but a lot of it is completely beyond me....so I thought I'd get the widget up and available, but also provide the files that go to make the whole thing...and see if there is anyone that wants to offer some improvements, advice or code (mostly the latter is what I'm after).

You can download the widget itself (should hopefully automatically install itself into Dashboard)...

[Update - A new version of the widget has been released]

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Finally, to give you an idea of what I would like to see happen with the widget, here is a list of the things I need help with or want to improve...

A better icon	My icon for the widget isn't that stunning. Any donation of an icon that retains the NZMac.com logo or the kiwi (or some acceptable variation) would be great. See the "Icon.psd" Photoshop file if you want to have a go.
A feed to be loaded when the widget is first launched.	I have a feeling that this would be done by some sort of "on load" command. I'm also not sure if the widget is updating at the time intervals you can set. I'd really like to see the "Go" button disappear as part of this and that the widget load a feed on startup, whenever there is a change to a setting or at the time interval indicated.
The display of text needs to be improved	The CSS file needs some more work and the HTML file might possibly need some additional coding. The RSS feed for the forum needs to looked at and some of the contents of the feed reduced, then the CSS file needs to be worked on to make the display of the text look better.
All settings moved to the back of the widget, which in turn would reduce widget size	There's currently no 'back' to this widget, so I'd like to see: The little 'i' info button added into the front The widget spin around to the back of the widget like all the cool widgets do All settings to be moved to the back of the widget The drop down menus be replaced with something nicer (radio buttons?) that are on the back
Credits placed on the back of the widget	I can do this once the part above is done.Once we get the widget spinning round, I'd like to include credits for everyone that helped listed on the back of the widget, either as a graphic or an automatic scroll news-feed kind of thing. For the record, credit goes to so far... Julius Vu, author of the JaRSS widget on which this widget was first based (can't find this guys website or email but would like to contact him) Mark Wilton-Jones, author of a script to parse RSS XML data files which is used by the widget Me
Improve the look	I'm happy to do away with brushed silver if someone has some other ideas. Just see the "Default.psd" Photoshop file if you want an idea of how the background has been put together and then saved as a PNG file. The logo needs to be in there obviously.
Make the widget resizeable	I'd like it both to automatically resize for the smaller feeds (not sure if this would be possible) and also be able to be resized by a drag handle on the bottom right. The forum feed could be scripted to provide as many postings as a person wants, but I'm not sure how to do this for the other two feeds.

All other suggestions gratefully accepted. Just send me an email ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) but keep in mind...great ideas need someone to implement them...and that won't be me. I've gone as far as I can with it, so I need help from the brilliant minds and know-how of the NZMac community.

Obviously, I'm hoping you'll all make use of the widget and offer some help (and guys, I have read the 70+ page PDF on making widgets that Apple provides, so please don't just point me to that...I'm stuck!). I've put all files up on this page as I'm happy for people to have all the files and make use of them as they see fit or use them to make their own widgets.

I wait with anticipation!

[Update 1]
I've found this very useful link...
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Developer-Tools/Dashboard-Widget-Xcode-Template.shtml
Which I've looked at and can see that I need to standardise a few things to make the widget a bit more robust...a few bits of commenting in the files but also the start of some CSS is there for front and back panels. The "info" files escape me...the version one in particular. I also don't have Xcode (and I know this sounds stupid, but don't really want to get into using it too much), so any help from someone that does use it would be great.

[Update 2]
I used the template file to sort out the CSS a bit and remove the messy table that was used for layout on the front. Div tags etc have been added into the CSS file ready for some improving and a back widget area. The widget has been renamed to version 0.2!

The fine print: The dashboard widget is supplied in good faith. By downloading the software you acknowledge and accept that there may be unintentional errors and that NZMac.com is not liable for any loss or damage you suffer as a result of such errors