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Run some third-party Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9 Apps
If you're still running 10.3.9 (as Steve noted on Monday during the WWDC keynote, that'd be "most of you"), and want to see a bit of the Tiger experience, here's a (free for now) method of doing so: by installing Mesa Dynamic's Amnesty Widget Browser, you can run most third-party widgets (Apple widgets excluded, of course, since you won't have them) on 10.3.9.

There are some issues, of course, but according to a friend who tested this for me, most of them work just fine. Since the Amnesty Widget Browser is in public beta, it's free for now -- it will be released as shareware in its final version. Finally, if you decide to remove it, here are the removal instructions.

I tested it under 10.4, and it's a handy little application for managing widgets, but (mainly due to some of the noted issues above), I prefer to just use Dashboard itself. But if you're in 10.3.9, it's the only way I'm aware of to use third-party Dashboard widgets, many of which are quite useful (alternative solutions welcomed in the comments!).
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Run some third-party Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9 | 4 comments | Create New Account
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Run Apple's Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9
Authored by: trollll on Jun 09, '05 10:33:50AM

DISCLAIMER: Don't do this, since it involves removing copyright information from source files and would upset Apple and, more importantly, their lawyers. Go buy 10.4. Since I have 10.4, I don't feel bad for doing it for a machine that can't run it.

But here's how:

You can easily run Apple's widgets if you can FTP or otherwise snag copies from a friend or otherwise. However, you need to edit the files within the widget to remove the copyright notices. Amnesty only searches for one or two strings in the HTML files when deciding if it comes from Apple or not. It doesn't decide not to run Apple widgets because it can't (though I guess it couldn't run some that reference to 10.4 features?), it decides not to, because it apparently just doesn't want to go there.

I haven't tried all of Apple's widgets, since I don't care about all of them, but I did get Calculator, Calendar, Dictionary, iTunes, Stickies, Weather and the World Clock to run just fine on 10.3.9. As well as of course quite a few of the third party widgets. None have failed to run after a little convincing.

For some of these, you also need to snag /System/Library/WidgetResources from a 10.4 machine. Don't worry, the JavaScript and PNGs work just as well in 10.3.9! If a widget doesn't appear enabled (or just doesn't work) in Amnesty, try opening it in Safari while using Transparent Windows (see earlier hint, too lazy to find the link). Between the Activity window and the JavaScript console, you can figure out what upset it.

Again, don't do this, since it involves removing copyright information from source files and would upset Apple and, more importantly, their lawyers.



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Re: Run Apple's Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9
Authored by: trollll on Jun 09, '05 10:37:38AM

Oh, since Amnesty doesn't seem particularly AppleScript friendly, I can only get it to appear/disappear on F12 keypresses by having the widgets lock in focussed and in front of everything and then tell it to quit or run.

Takes forever, though...which defeats the purpose of easy-to-access widgets.

Any suggestions? I tried telling each window within the app to come to the front, but nothing has worked so far...



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Re: Run Apple's Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9
Authored by: saddino on Jun 09, '05 11:36:35AM

FYI, Amnesty will have AppleScript and full hot key support when it is 1.0 is released.



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Run some third-party Dashboard widgets in 10.3.9
Authored by: saddino on Jun 16, '05 10:23:08AM

Amnesty running on Tiger is also the only way to have a Dashboard widget embedded directly inside your desktop (as opposed to floating via the dev-trick) or other tricks (floating at 50% opaqueness and click-through, etc). The new version of Amnesty also supports multiple widget "sets" which is like having 2, 3, 4 or more additional virtual Dashboards which is nice when space on your real Dashboard gets scarce.



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