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PurpleGiant · Apr 1, 2005, 07:06 AM

Many of you here know that I was the person behind The Dashboader, the first Dashboard-related website out there. Well now The Dashboarder has joined forces with DashboardDeveloper to launch a new website:

http://www.dashboardwidgets.com

DashboardWidgets is the result of merging the above two sites into a single Dashboard site, including Dashboard news & discussion, and of course, widgets! The site is growing rapidly as Tiger's release date nears, and right now we have a competition to win a Mac mini for developers who enter their widgets.

esXXI · Apr 1, 2005, 09:06 AM

Hope all goes well, both sites needed a shot of activity.

MetalSnake · Apr 1, 2005, 10:00 AM

really cool! I want to try those Dashboard Games now, but I need the Tiger

phillryu · Apr 1, 2005, 03:47 PM

I'm sorry, but what's the difference from this site and DashboardDeveloper besides the name and domain address?

PurpleGiant · Apr 1, 2005, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by phillryu:
I'm sorry, but what's the difference from this site and DashboardDeveloper besides the name and domain address?

The entire forums and member list from The Dashboarder has been merged so that users from The Dashboarder and Dashboard Developer can post on the new site, and widgets from both sites can also be found in the new Widget Showcase. The combined effect of this has left Dashboard developers less divided between multiple sites, by providing one site, with the content from two.

Oh, and the domain is damn catchy

phillryu · Apr 1, 2005, 04:11 PM

Yes, you just told me what the two sites share. I still don't get what's the difference between the two.

cruciarius · Apr 1, 2005, 05:30 PM

i could have sworn apple changed the names of theirs to "gadgets", though i still them calling them dashboard widgets on apple's site. going to get really confusing...

PurpleGiant · Apr 1, 2005, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by cruciarius:
i could have sworn apple changed the names of theirs to "gadgets", though i still them calling them dashboard widgets on apple's site. going to get really confusing...

Other way around

When Dashboard was first announced, Steve called them widgets, however the developer build of Tiger that was released called them gadgets, and each one had a .gadget file extension.

The Apple website continued to call them widgets, and with the next Tiger build, they were renamed widgets. Seems they were called gadgets almost right up until Tiger was previewed, hence the old name in the older Tiger build.

cruciarius · Apr 1, 2005, 06:17 PM

ah ok. thanks for clearing that up, but it'll still be confusing. when i think widgets, i think konfabulator.

unlinear · Apr 1, 2005, 07:19 PM

I'm wondering why your competition is ending before the general public can have their hands on Tiger. I'd love to develop widgets, but entering your competition would require time travel.

Non-Apple Developer Program members are people too.

PurpleGiant · Apr 1, 2005, 07:38 PM

Originally posted by unlinear:
I'm wondering why your competition is ending before the general public can have their hands on Tiger. I'd love to develop widgets, but entering your competition would require time travel.

Non-Apple Developer Program members are people too.

The competition is to get developers on board, so that we have a decent selection of widgets in time for Tiger's public launch. We are sure to have more competitions in the future for you to enter.

As an aside, although testing becomes tricky, you can actually develop dashboard widgets without Tiger, using your own web development tools. As far as I am aware, some developers are doing exactly this, and getting forum members with access to Tiger to beta test for them.

mpmchugh · Apr 1, 2005, 09:35 PM

Not sure if anyone's told you this yet, but your new site has lots of problems rendering in FireFox.

Looks great in Safari, though.

-mpm

angelmb · Apr 2, 2005, 07:49 AM

Originally posted by mpmchugh:
Not sure if anyone's told you this yet, but your new site has lots of problems rendering in FireFox.

Looks great in Safari, though.

-mpm

A clic on reload 'use' to solve the Firefox rendering issues thingy here.

ashtoash · Apr 5, 2005, 04:16 PM

I own corewidget.com and corewidgets.com you want me to point them to your dashboardwidgets site?

I hope you don't pay for hosting heh, if you do PM me.

OptimusG4 · Apr 5, 2005, 06:05 PM

Originally posted by mpmchugh:
Not sure if anyone's told you this yet, but your new site has lots of problems rendering in FireFox.

Looks great in Safari, though.

-mpm

Weird. I have the latest Camino nightly and it renders perfect.

jcontonio · Apr 6, 2005, 08:04 PM

Here we go, the flood of ugly and poorly written widgets and widget sites...just like the konfabulator site.

I will probably only use widgets from Apple's site that displays them because they'll do some sort of quality check. Really, people shouldn't make ugly widgets. If you can't design, don't do it.