wednesday, february 08, 2006
This is geeky enough for you
At one point, I wondered whether the introduction of Dashboard widgets to OS X would make menubar items obsolete. But I imagine Apple made sure that the two places for accessories are different enough to allow both kinds to thrive. Widgets are just another opportunity to collect shiny things! In other news, I recently updated super OS X menubar items with a bunch of new items and fixed links.
Some menubar items are cramped inside 25x22 pixels, so widgets take their place on my computer; the weather forecast and system statistics both live in the Dashboard now. But a little calendar and new email notifier both still live on the menubar — even though there are widgets that do the same things — because I like to see them all the time. So the distinction between menubar item and widget has to do with how often I want to see the item’s information, how much information it has, and maybe whether the item looks better in black and white (the only true menubar colors) or glossy black and cool colors (my weird Dashboard color scheme).
These are items that are available both as menubar items and Dashboard widgets, and this is where I think they belong. Unlinked items are included in OS X.
| thing | should be on menubar? | should be on Dashboard? |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar | yes | no |
| Countdown clock | no | yes |
| Email notifier | yes | no |
| iTunes control | yes | no |
| Moon phase | no | yes |
| Google search | no | no |
| System monitors | no | yes |
| Uptime display | no | yes |
| Weather forecast | no | yes |
I’d like iScrobbler (the Last.fm plugin) to be a widget instead of a menubar item. It doesn’t do anything useful on my menubar except distract me with green flashes. An iScrobbler widget could display some statistics when I felt like looking at it while hiding away and doing its own thing most of the time.
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