July 21, 2005

Update: Thanks to Dan for cluing me in to a hidden feature already built into Dashboard that lets you put widgets on the desktop. See the comments.

Mesa Dynamics Amnesty Widget Browser lets you use Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Dashboard widgets directly on your desktop. It will even let you run many widgets on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

This idea is so obvious, I've been considering trying to implement it myself, just to see if it was easy. Mesa Dynamics is charging $19.95 for it.

(Mesa is using enough trademark symbols on its site that it's possible they're mistaking copyright law for trademark law: copyrights are automatic, but trademarks must be registered. It's also possible they're registering all of those marks, at $325 a pop...)

comments...

Dan, July 21, 2005 8:04 AM:

I'm not sure I completely understand the desired goal (only use a Mac for testing purposes at work, and Panther at that) but I believe there's a way to do this without the third-party app. See:

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/9714#227314

Dan Sanderson, July 21, 2005 9:28 AM:

Thanks, Dan! That message you link to mentions the need to enable a developer mode, but I just tried it without activating devmode, and it works! In 10.4.2, at least. (I checked to make sure that I do not have that flag set.)

Just activate Dashboard (F12), drag the widget out of the panel at the bottom of the screen and hold the mouse button while you press F12 again, then let go. The widget will plop right onto the desktop.

To get rid of it, just activate Dashboard, then de-activate it again. This means only one widget can be on the desktop at a time, and accessing other widgets (even temporarily) wipes the first widget back to the Dashboard. That's not desireable behavior if I want to keep a set of widgets on the screen at all times, but one could argue that such things shouldn't be widgets in the first place.

Also worth noting that the widget always stays on top of other windows.

Dan Sanderson, July 21, 2005 9:34 AM:

And now having just tried it with devmode: devmode is better. You can have multiple widgets on the desktop at once, and they don't get wiped away when you activate Dashboard. To move them back to the Dashboard, pick them up, hit F12 to activate the Dashboard, then drop them.

The command to activate devmode is:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

Then log out and log back in (or just restart the Dock).

Thanks Dan!