“Mac OS X 10.4.2 will aim to improve the user experience of Tiger’s Dashboard by introducing a manager for widgets, Think Secret has learned. While earlier versions of the update to Tiger have included tweaks to the installation and management of Dashboard widgets, the latest builds reportedly incorporate a slick-looking widget manager that enables users to quickly enable, disable, or delete their widgets. Apple provided build 8C40 of Version 10.4.2 to developers on Friday, sources said,” Nick dePlume reports for Think Secret.
“In the newest [Mac OS X Tiger developer] builds, the ‘More Widgets’ button located on the right side of the screen — directly above the widget bar — is replaced by a new ‘Manage Widgets’ option. This button launches the new widget manager within Dashboard,” dePlume reports. “While Think Secret reported earlier that the Version 10.4.2 update was set for release to the Internet and retail boxes of Tiger this past week, testers encountered a number of bugs in build 8C33 and other seeds. Build 8C40 fixes a number of these bugs… According to sources, Apple is not reporting any issues with the latest build.”
Full article with more detail and information about changes to Dashboard Widget installation here.
Much needed – I hope it’s sleekier than that one popular 3rd-party Widget Manager (and I hope it’s not in the System Preferences)
Has anyone else had doubts about widgets? I start up a few and check the Activity Monitor only to find a 200k widget is grabbing 20Mb of RAM. I am not sure that is efficient or even necessary. I can’t imagine that loading up 5 widgets or so would be worth the performance hit.
I hope there’s an option to make a new widget available to all accounts on the Mac. It’s silly that you have to download multiple copies of the same widget, unless you manually move it from “~/Library/Widgets” to “/Library/Widgets”. Surely this could be automated.
I totally agree with LordRobin. There should a system preference or something that allows you to specify the default location of Widgets. I want them to be in/Library/Widgets as well, and *not* in my local widget folder.
forget the widgets , please sort out the finder find
if there was an option for slower macs to type something then press return it would save me a lot of beachball hassle
I thought the finder find was just spotlight in a window…. ?
I agree with flaps, Finder find is terrible
It IS. But sometimes it just starts searching for the first letter typed and freezes for a couple of minutes before telling you it has found a Hundred and Fifty Thousand files with ‘D’ in them
I wonder if it will be anything like the new widget page at apple.com: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/.
For speedier Spotlighting, you might try Laserlight: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27091. It basically gives you an initial dialogue box to type in your search and then pastes the search string into Spotlight. I haven’t tried it though, because I haven’t had much trouble with Spotlight, but some might like it.
A work around for the finder find issue would be to paste your query into the field.
I agree that it’s a hassle that should be dealt with in preferences, but that should help in the mean time.
We’ve been having serious issues at our office trying to just do a search with finder (OS X 10.3.9) on our SNAP servers. Pretty much a guaranteed perma-beachball…
Yep, finder find sux. Spotlight isn’t much help either.
As soon as i type ‘a’, everything with an ‘a’ in it is listed. It realy is more of a hinderence than a help. And why is it whenever i go into the finder find option it never remembers my settings. I have to go to the name contains tabs everytime. I know its nice to get things out before MS, but i’d rather be second place and better, than first and ‘as good as’ or ‘good enough’.
“Crouching” said they’re having trouble with Finder find, IN 10.3.9–THAT’S NOT SPOTLIGHT!!!
Only 10.4.x is Spotlight.
I want the them to change the apperance of the mail..it looks so much Window like. I want them to bring the old mail with the drawer. I miss it sooooo much.
Great! Now I’ll have no use for all those widget managers I downloaded….
I hope they fix the search problems in Tiger. If they just delayed searching until you typed a few letters, that would still allow find-as-you-type (for those who want it — anyone?), while alleviating the find-all-the-files-with-letter-x problem.
I was excited to read about a much-needed widget manager, but surprised not to see any mention of a feature for grouping activated widgets (like the old Extensions Manager). I think such a feature would make the new widget manager an A+ improvement.