Friday, November 04, 2005

Free Your Widgets From Dashboard (Part II)

The "Toggle Widget-On-Top" mini app is finally here!

Since we talked about putting dashboard widgets directly on the desktop, I promised there will be a Part II, which makes the mini app available. I, for one, have been waiting to see the promise fulfilled. The day has finally come, and it's TODAY!

Get the mini app

If you are hardcore about doing the UNIX command yourself, follow the instructions in Part I. Else, download the mini-app and be happy!

Click the icon to download the mini app.

Run the mini app

  1. If you are using Safari to download the mini app, it should automatically unzip and mount the disk image for you. Else, unzip it manually and double click the .dmg file to mount the disk image yourself.

  2. Once you get the the disk image mounted, the rest are just usual routines. You can either run the mini app directly, or copy it to your Application folder and run it from there.


Show me the Mm...magic!

You are good to go after running the mini app. Now let's do the trick!
  1. Launch dashboard by clicking the dashboard toggle key (e.g. F12, depending on your settings in Preference->'Dashboard & Exposé').

  2. Click on any widget and drag a little. Here's the catch: while dragging, hit the dashboard toggle key once. WHALAH! Now the widget is on your desktop, and it stays on top of all windows, all the time!
*repeating step 2 with the widgets on your desktop will bring them back to dashboard.

Show it off

With this trick you can now use your favorite widgets without even launching the Dashboard, and perhaps wow a few friends who don't read MacNify!

Yet another Mac tip is on the web!