Useful Mac Tip -- Free Widgets from Purgatory

In the hundreds of thousands of posts web loggers have logged about Apple, it's damn difficult to find actual useful and interesting information. More often than not, it's kindergarten-stle taunts against Microsoft or folks who use Windows PCs, or near delusive hope that the white knight Apple will topple the Microsoft-Intel kingdom. But if you dig hard, you can find useful information. Search developer blogs.

For example, here's one that brings Konfabulator-style functionality to Dashboard (which if Apple is honest, they'd admit that Konfab was their inspiration to Dashboard). Currently, Dashboard widgets are confined to a special purgatory that is enterable by pressing F12 (or whatever you configured your Dashboard key to be). If you want to raise Dashboard widgets to the level of the living (where all the other desktop applications lie), follow these instructions which I pulled from MacDevCenter.

Want to move a widget to the main window layer? Of course you do. Here's how: go to Terminal and type the command defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES. Still in Terminal, type killall Dock to restart Dashboard (and the Dock). Activate Dashboard (by default, you do that by pressing F12). Find the widget you want to put on the main layer and drag it a bit, but don't let go of the mouse button. While you're still holding the mouse button down, press the Dashboard keystroke again and release it, then release the mouse button. Your widget should now be floating above the Desktop and windows.