[mmurray]

Is there a way of shrinking widgets ? On a 12" PB they take up a lot of space.

Thanks - Michael

[andreadeca]

Originally Posted by mmurray

Is there a way of shrinking widgets ? On a 12" PB they take up a lot of space.

Thanks - Michael

Alas, not yet, at least not the ones that come out of the box with Tiger.
Some of the ones you can download from the Net are resizable, but in general, no.

...of course, you can always HACK THEM! *evil grin*

All the widgets are in the /Library/Widgets/ folder.
They LOOK like files, but they are in fact directories, and you can go in them using the terminal.
In there, you will find all the widget files, and you can modify them at will!

EXAMPLE: Let's HaCk the STICKIES Widget!

1. open terminal
2. cd /Library/Widgets/Stickies.wdgt/
3. sudo vi Info.plist

* at this point: if you do not know what the sudo command is, or how to use vi, RDFM ("man sudo" and "man vi")! *

4. modify the Width and Height tags at will!

For example, my original info.plist for Stickies was this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"
>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.widget.stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>Stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
<string>Stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>Height</key>
<integer>206</integer>
<key>MainHTML</key>
<string>Stickies.html</string>
<key>Width</key>
<integer>225</integer>
<key>CloseBoxInsetX</key>
<integer>9</integer>
<key>CloseBoxInsetY</key>
<integer>4</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

I modified it to this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"
>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.widget.stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>Stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
<string>Stickies</string>
<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>Height</key>
<integer>103 </integer>
<key>MainHTML</key>
<string>Stickies.html</string>
<key>Width</key>
<integer>112 </integer>
<key>CloseBoxInsetX</key>
<integer>9</integer>
<key>CloseBoxInsetY</key>
<integer>4</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

5. Restart the widget: it will now be half size compared to before (only works for NEW widgets, sorry!).

HOWEVER: this is NOT enough! You will also need to get your hands a little bit more dirty: edit the Stickies.html and Stickies.css files for the widgets to save the new size of the widget and modify the font size, otherwise, when you type in the widget, text size will be too big and
it will not scroll decently.

One day I'll finish the hack and post here the new stickies (if it turns out to be legal, of course!).

have fun!

[bluesloth]

I would really like that also. I doubt there is an easy way though.

What this will probably take is for people to modifiy the widgets that Apple made. Hopefully someone will tackle it.

I've noticed that many of the 3rd part widgets are too big also. Some are absolutely huge, and for no reason. I guess many developers can't force themselves to make their babies a reasonable size.

[dfiler]

I was reading through the dashboard developer docs yesterday and noticed that they repeatedly emphasize how important it is that widgets not be too large...

So... they're aware of the issue and their solution is to warn developers about widget size.