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Dashboard was a clone ("Sherlock") of Konfabulator, a third party app. It looks like Konfabulator was acquired by Yahoo but eventually shut down. Maybe this is

Dashboard was a clone ("Sherlock") of Konfabulator, a third party app. It looks like Konfabulator was acquired by Yahoo but eventually shut down. Maybe this is once again an interesting third party opportunity? I can't even recall how to invoke Dashboard. The fact that was always hidden meant I never used it.

toddmorey 7y ago
There used to be a doc icon and even a physical key for it.
mceachen 7y ago
There was a keyboard shortcut, or you could multi-finger swipe to it.
andrew_ 7y ago
I was the author of a Windows competitor named Kapsules back when Konfabulator was hot and before the buyout by death knell by Yahoo!. (I tried to go with Winfabulator but they didn't take too kindly to that - I was young and ignorant.) This was a space that was useful, and then became saturated and commercialized to the detriment of usefulness. It was just before we had good off-screen rendering, right as the html-and-js-as-desktop-apps was starting to take off, and when transparency in window rendering was still difficult. I could share a lot more thoughts Is there an opportunity to fill the void? I'm really not sure. Bear in mind that this was well before the iPhone hit and smartphone apps got huge. Most of the things we did with widgets back then are far easier done on our phones now. Kapsules had some good parity with what Konfabulator and Apple Widgets had offered, and I can't name a single widget for Kapsules, aside from the silly barking hamster, that doesn't ship by default with our phones now. The widget craze was a fun phase of app development, and no doubt influenced UX and mobile apps, but I consider it merely an interesting footnote now. If anyone is interested in the source code for Kapsules, I can probably dig it up from one of my old HDDs. It was written in C# on .NET 4.0.
- fixmycode 7y ago
  What's your take on Android widgets? I used to think they were all I ever wanted in a system only to use them less and less with every iteration of the OS, now fewer and fewer apps come with widgets, or even try to use them for something really useful. Has the user lost the appetite for at-glance desktop tools?
  - andrew_ 7y ago
    Great observation. I've been an Android user since the Galaxy Nexus; from my own personal experience, I think they've lost relevancy as really fast and easy app switching is available, and we populate our various launcher screens with more and more app icons/shortcuts. Apps also have really good notification bar "widgets" now that seem to be the preference (e.g. Spotify, Pandora)
philwelch 7y ago
It's also a similar concept to "desk accessories" from the original "System 1" Mac OS.
scarface74 7y ago
The ability to hit a shortcut key and run mini applications in a separate layer was part of Apple’s GS/OS for the Apple //gs back in the mid 80s.

toddmorey 7y ago

There used to be a doc icon and even a physical key for it.

mceachen 7y ago

There was a keyboard shortcut, or you could multi-finger swipe to it.

andrew_ 7y ago

I was the author of a Windows competitor named Kapsules back when Konfabulator was hot and before the buyout by death knell by Yahoo!. (I tried to go with Winfabulator but they didn't take too kindly to that - I was young and ignorant.) This was a space that was useful, and then became saturated and commercialized to the detriment of usefulness. It was just before we had good off-screen rendering, right as the html-and-js-as-desktop-apps was starting to take off, and when transparency in window rendering was still difficult. I could share a lot more thoughts Is there an opportunity to fill the void? I'm really not sure. Bear in mind that this was well before the iPhone hit and smartphone apps got huge. Most of the things we did with widgets back then are far easier done on our phones now. Kapsules had some good parity with what Konfabulator and Apple Widgets had offered, and I can't name a single widget for Kapsules, aside from the silly barking hamster, that doesn't ship by default with our phones now. The widget craze was a fun phase of app development, and no doubt influenced UX and mobile apps, but I consider it merely an interesting footnote now. If anyone is interested in the source code for Kapsules, I can probably dig it up from one of my old HDDs. It was written in C# on .NET 4.0.

fixmycode 7y ago
What's your take on Android widgets? I used to think they were all I ever wanted in a system only to use them less and less with every iteration of the OS, now fewer and fewer apps come with widgets, or even try to use them for something really useful. Has the user lost the appetite for at-glance desktop tools?
- andrew_ 7y ago
  Great observation. I've been an Android user since the Galaxy Nexus; from my own personal experience, I think they've lost relevancy as really fast and easy app switching is available, and we populate our various launcher screens with more and more app icons/shortcuts. Apps also have really good notification bar "widgets" now that seem to be the preference (e.g. Spotify, Pandora)

philwelch 7y ago

It's also a similar concept to "desk accessories" from the original "System 1" Mac OS.

scarface74 7y ago

The ability to hit a shortcut key and run mini applications in a separate layer was part of Apple’s GS/OS for the Apple //gs back in the mid 80s.