Dashboard OS X Guide

The Dashboard is where you will find the Widgets. Widgets are little applications that do simple tasks. They float in your Dashboard and you can change them around. You can download Widgets on various websites and add them to your collection.

To access your Dashboard, press F12 or the Dashboard application icon. To close it, press F12 again or click anywhere on the Dashboard where there isn't a Widget. To add a new Widget, click on the "+" sign and drag them from the list to the Dashboard. To close a running Widget, click on their "X" while in the Widget menu.

Creating Widgets

A new feature in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is the "Web Clip" Widget. This function in Safari lets you take a precise part of a website and make a widget out of it. For example, you could take the first 4-5 posts of a forum and make a widget out of it. Then, directly from your Dashboard, you could see the first posts of your favorite forum. You could also do things like take a clip from the from page of CNN. Doing that, you could have the top story of the news in your Dash. Using your imagination, you could make some great widgets which will save you time in the long run.