Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."
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Do you OS X-using Buffistas use the Dashboard?
It's the quickest way for me to pull up a dictionary, unit conversion,
t hits F13
and, um, calculator. When I need them at work, that is. I'm not sure I ever use Dashboard at home, unless I hit the key by accident with my big fat sausage fingers.
t edit
Also, I am having MASSIVE Leopard-oost.
I absolutely hated the iSync integration with Palm. Missing Sync is much better for my needs.
I use the Dashboard every day for dictionary, weather, and checking my stocks. And the translation is uber-useful when my old spanish tutor IMs me. I also like the TV Forecast widget, which tells me when my favorite shows have a new episode, the calendar widget is much faster than iCal for basic date-checking, weather radar is fun, and the calculator is useful for short calculations.
In other words: yes. I use it a lot.
I've got Dashboard running a couple other things, too -- there's a widget that will print out envelopes so I don't have to struggle with getting a template working in one of my word-processing programs, a To-Do List that checks with my iCal, a GMail mail list, a widget that tells me how many songs and other statistics are in my iTunes.
The TV Forecast thingie is something that I should get....
I also have a Tetris widget and Sudoku widget, but as far as my employer knows, I never use them....
And I have the Daily Comics widget, which lets you select from a list of comic strips and editorial cartoons, and it grabs them all every day and you can flip through them like a slide show.
Oooh! And the Simpsons quote widget, which just sits up in the top right corner, so that whenever I activate Dashboard, I get a new quote. (I don't go to Dashboard *just* for a Simpsons quote.) (Really!)
Also, did you know that you can pull a widget out of the Dashboard so that it lives on your desktop?
I absolutely hated the iSync integration with Palm.
Why?
did you know that you can pull a widget out of the Dashboard so that it lives on your desktop?
This I like!
did you know that you can pull a widget out of the Dashboard so that it lives on your desktop?
This I like!
I like it in theory, but I realized that, if I'm using Quark XPress and need the dictionary (to figure out hyphenation -- it's a thing), I still have to press one key to show the desktop (F11), where the widget would be living, or one key to show the Dashboard (F13), where the widget currently resides.
Six of one.
if I'm using Quark XPress and need the dictionary (to figure out hyphenation
I'm not at a Mac right now, but I remember noticing that some app I was in last night that
wasn't
a browser had a "search in Google" context sensitive menu option. I liked that.
My perfect widget would be a translucent window that's displaying information from somewhere else that's changing--time, weather, whatever. I want to be able to have that floating over the window I'm working with, but not obscuring it.
I remember noticing that some app I was in last night that wasn't a browser had a "search in Google" context sensitive menu option. I liked that.
From any app, there is an App Name -> Services -> Search in Google menu entry.
did you know that you can pull a widget out of the Dashboard so that it lives on your desktop?
I did not! That could definitely come in handy.