Jun 30
Apple’s Dashboard
2004 at 03.52 am posted by Veerle Pieters
My initial reaction to Dashboard was like most people “it’s just like Konfabulator”. As you know Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine. If you look on Apple’s Dashboard page it says “build your own widgets using the JavaScript language”, but that’s sort of misleading. With some clarification provided by Dave Hyatt, it looks like Dashboard will be more then just JavaScript. The Dashboard widgets are in fact just Web pages. Every widget can hold CSS2, DOM2, JS, HTML, XMLHttpRequest, Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc. With this knowledge the possibilities are more accessible for people like me with limited knowledge of JavaScript.
As I understand it now, it would be possible for example to build a small Web page with Shaun Inman’s remarkable Shortstats for example and put it on your desktop as a widget. Think about all the creative things we could do here! A W3C validator widget on your desktop would be not too far off. So if you go beyond the surface there seems to be a lot of difference between the 2, they only appear to be the same.
I still have a lot of respect for the guys of Konfabulator, but only have my reservations on their statement to the press, since they don’t own the idea. In fact, 3 years before Konfabulator there was already a program on Windows called DesktopX which looks and does much the same, only without the smoothness and coolness of Konfabulator. If you put things in perspective I think it’s a thin line. Still the descent thing for Apple to do was to involve them in some way. Tiger’s Dashboard is still a year away so who knows what the final product will look or be like.
In related news Safari 1.3 has also been seeded to developers and besides a new installer screen it will also contain one of my wishes namely an web archive feature, so you can still look at pages long after they disappeared from the web including images and links etc. It also contains a completely rewritten JavaScript engine and that makes this version the fastest one to date.
UPDATE : An excellent assessment on the Konfabulator vs Dashboard story is written by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and well worth a read.
7served
1
new JS engine ey? *gulp*. Thanks for the info, i’ll have to get my hands on that seeded version to check some advanced code i’ve been working on (works peachy in Panther Safari heh).
2
Yeah, competition can really be a pain. Coming out with a better way to do something has been the commercial way. Not that Konfabulator is crap or anything, it’s just about integration and improvements.
The flaming that has been going on is a bit ridiculous. Take photography for example (you’ll get where I’m going in a second), it was invented by one Frenchman. An Englishman saw his work and started to build upon it. Then another Frenchman made it available for public use. But not many really credit any of those people for the work they did.
So by integrating a technology into the operating system, there is just a natural advancement taking place. Apple is not obligated to give credit to Konfabulator, but I’m sure Konfabulator was designed to improve upon other programs that were available.
3
John Gruber explains the conflict well: Daring Fireball
4
What is ShortStat exactly? The site of ShortStat isn’t really helpfull about that.
5
@kMikaZu: Shortstat is a tool to monitor all traffic to your website, so a bit like NedStat for example, but being free and graciously donated to the world by Shaun.
You can monitor from which site people come to yours, which search engines are being used, the search term etc. You have to implement it to work with your website. Hope this is somewhat clear.
6
Thx!!!! That’s clear enough :)
7
Dashboard looks cool, check out these examples of gadgets.