tar.gz file (which does store permissions), or better yet, execute the full command required to execute the file, such as /usr/bin/php -q test.php. For this reason, you would either want to distribute the Widget as a.
zip file, certain data such as the executable bit is not transmitted, so simply executing a script called test.php won't necessarily get run by the PHP interpreter, even if you prefix it with the proper script shebang. zip files (you can't distribute the raw Widget since it is actually just a folder containing several files). One caveat with this, though, is that widgets are usually distributed as. These can do some of the heavy lifting which JavaScript isn't capable of, and your Widget can consume the output of the script. wdgt directory, which can be executed with the widget.system() function. Tip #4: Running Command Line ScriptsĪs a Widget developer, you are allowed to package executable files within your. Settings other than the security items would properly be reloaded each time a Widget was removed from the Dashboard and added again, such as the X and Y position of the close icon. So, try to set your options right the first time or be prepared for some hair pulling slowness. If you run your Widget once, and make a change to the plist file, it will remain in memory until a reboot (there should be a cached file to delete or a Terminal command to run to fix this, but I couldn't find it). Or more specifically, certain pieces of it are (e.g. The XML document which controls a bunch of your Widget's attributes ist, is cached rather aggressively by OS X. Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari -disable-web-security Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome -disable-web-security Keep in mind that if you run other websites in the browser while developing, there are security risks involved. Run one of the following commands in your Terminal (depending on which browser you prefer to develop on). Luckily for us, WebKit based browsers have a command line argument you can pass in to disable this feature. Since an author has a bit more control of a Widget than a website, it makes sense that the Widget doesn't require the same restrictions that a browser places on a website. A Widget, however, doesn't have a domain and (if it's AJAX powered) will need to talk to a web service to get updates and send new data for a website. This prevents all sorts of bad things from happening. Tip #2: Getting around Cross Site Request restrictions in your browserĪ feature of modern browsers is that AJAX (XHR) requests are not able to access data in a separate domain.
You can use the following line of code to determine if you are in the browser or Widget mode, and either do or do not run functionality: var isWidget = (typeof(widget) != "undefined") You will need to keep this in mind while developing your Widget. This widget object, of course, is NOT available to your browser. execute commands, rotate widget animations, run an app or open a website, and save preferences ). Apple creates an object available to your Widget, appropriately named “ widget“, which allows you to do some magic you can't normally do in a browser (e.g. The built-in web developer tools (Cmd + Opt + I) will help you out a lot. Don't bother using Firefox, or trying to make the HTML render the same in multiple browsers. Since the widget will be rendered using WebKit, you will want to use Google Chrome or Apple Safari to develop. While developing your widget, you will want to build it in a web browser. AJAX works better than expected (no cross domain limitations), and you can even run command line applications (which can be distributed within the widget). The background of the DOM is transparent by default, and using semi-transparent PNG's show the desktop as expected.
A widget can have a predefined (and resizable), width and height. Each widget in the OS X Dashboard contains it's own DOM, supports most of the existing events you would expect, and is rendered using WebKit (or, more specifically, Safari based WebKit, I believe there are some Safari specific features you can use). The coolest thing about Dashboard Widgets is that they are built using HTML and JavaScript, which means that any web developer can build a widget. I've picked up these tips while developing the NeoInvoice Time Tracking Widget, along with development of some other smaller widgets. This guide will cover some tools to use, shortcomings, gotcha's, you name it. This guide is meant to supplement the comprehensive (although limited) Apple Dashboard Reference page, which provides a lot of technical details, but lacks some of the important “between the lines” stuff. 5 min read Multithreaded JavaScript, O'Reilly 2021, has been published!