Dashcode app for creating Dashboard widgets bundled with MacBooks
The version of Daschode included with MacBooks is marked as 1.0 (41). According to Think Secret, Dashcode handles all aspects of Widget management, from the front and back of a widget to its default image, Widget icon, and other attributes. From the Inspector developers can specify button shapes, sizes, and styles, backgrounds, colors, and more. A debugging tool and Spotlight-like search functionality is also part of the package.
And here's a detailed description from our friends at [url=http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/news/index.php?id=P47]Dashboard Widgets[/url]: "Dashcode appears to have four templates, QuickTime, Web search, Webcam, and RSS, which can each be made into a usable widget with very little configuration. Of interest is the Web search template. Few details have been revealed as to what kind of setup would be needed for this widget but a Yahoo Search featured in the demo video listed search results within the widget. This is likely available because of an API that allows web developers to syndicate Yahoo content but, because such APIs do not exist for smaller sites, we can only wonder if the widget will parse HTML result pages or simply be inoperable without a means of retrieving the data as an XML document.
"What stands out the most about this development environment is its WYSIWYG design functionality. Dashcode makes it extremely simple to position and resize elements. Users can also create standard Dashboard buttons, form elements, and other essential user-interactible features through its Library. Once they’ve been added, the developer can easily control them through Javascript in a split Design/Code view. Like Xcode, Dashcode also features Javascript code completion.
"Dashcode allows developers to run and debug their widget from within the application. While the widget is running, Dashcode displays a run log for the widget and, after enabling “tracing†the run log will display every function being executed by the widget in real time. From there, Dashcode offers quite a few debugging tools along with Spotlight searching of the code and the run log plus a code evaluator that will send Javascript commands directly to the widget (think changing the values of variables, executing functions, etc)."
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