New Dashboard vs K info (?) Options

[Chaszmyr]

I've heard lots of talk about Dashboard vs Konfabulator. I will start by saying that personally, I prefer Konfabulator over Dashboard, and the reason is simple: I like for my widgets to be visible all the time, I don't want to have to hit a key.

As for the (potentially) new info: Arlo has been complaining about Dashboard stealing K's architecture, and don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work Arlo and Perry have done on K, and I recognize that Dashboard is pretty similar to K, which I can understand them being unhappy about. However, Dashboard differes from Konfabulator in a major way: Widget architecture. Konfabulator widgets rely primarily on simply JavaScript. Dashboard, on the other hand, uses HTML and CSS for creating their widgets, in addition to JavaScript. To the best of my knowledge, Konfabulator does not support HTML or CSS, and if this is true, I think it is a fairly fundamental change to the implementation of the concept.

Arlo, I don't mean for this post to be offensive in any way, I am a registered Konfabulator user and proud of it, but unfortunately there is room for similar products on the market.

[vain]

Indeed, Dashboard is a bit more than just what Konfabulator does. In fact, one could easily argue it's the next and logical extention of the idea:

each widget is just a web page, and so you have the full power of WebKit behind each one... CSS2, DOM2, JS, HTML, XMLHttpRequest, Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc. I'll have a lot more to say later on, but I thought it important to clear that up right up front, since a lot of people were asking me about it in email and such.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/

[johnq]

Funny, because just the other day as I was playing in Xcode and WebKit it occurred to me why are there no mini webpage windows in Konfabulator. I mean if I design a little webpage I thought I might be able to view it in a little Konfab widget.

So I looked for some nib files that I could shoehorn a web view into and bumped into the fact that it is really just Javascript handling PNGs and no nibs to be found. (I say "just" in an appreciative way, it's clever and of course far more complex than that.) Now it's efficient (probably faster) but ultimately limiting for that particular idea I had. (And I'm not blaming it for being something other than what I thought it was, that's certainly not Konfab's fault).

A Dashboard window apparently is just a webpage whose window type apparently let's you point to a PNG to define its shape but whose contents can be anything WebKit can display. This will be incredible when used with Flash/Quicktime.

I think by the time we find out more details Dashboard should prove to be different enough to safely allow each to co-exist happily. And of course I doubt it'd be hard for Arlo to modify things so a widget can use a WebView in some future version.

If Apple had never made Dashboard, I suspect someone, probably Arlo, would have thought to use web views in his widgets eventually.

[Arlo Rose]

If Apple had never made Dashboard, I suspect someone, probably Arlo, would have thought to use web views in his widgets eventually.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but our internal versions of Konfabulator have had the ability to display web page objects (and other fun things) for quite some time. They just aren't well tested enough to make it into public builds (yet).


Cheers,
Arlo Rose

[tiger'd]

No, he means that someone would have thought to have the widget architecture simply be composed of a web page, not to be able to display web page objects in widgets.

[johnq]

If Apple had never made Dashboard, I suspect someone, probably Arlo, would have thought to use web views in his widgets eventually.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but our internal versions of Konfabulator have had the ability to display web page objects (and other fun things) for quite some time. They just aren't well tested enough to make it into public builds (yet).


Cheers,
Arlo Rose

I meant that, in a world without Dashboard, the functionality of tapping into WebKit etc would have occurred naturally anyway (apparently is has already) either by you Arlo (or any co-developers) or at the request of users, either for "just" web page objects within a current style widget or for making the widget solely be a webpage but with irregularly shaped window based on a PNG shape. So I think both of the previous posts are right, I just didn't phrase it well enough.

There is an elegance to "just" Javascript and PNGs (I know it's more than that), so it's kinda a shame that it might branch from that original vision, but that's software design in the real world I guess. But it seems like it would be a wrench in the current implementation, by that I mean a lot of extra work from what I can see. (Hence it not making public release )

Give 'em hell...

[Arlo Rose]

No, he means that someone would have thought to have the widget architecture simply be composed of a web page, not to be able to display web page objects in widgets.

Oh. No, I can't see us doing that any time soon.


Cheers,
Arlo Rose

[tiger'd]

Oh.  No, I can't see us doing that any time soon.

Why not? You could introduce a new widget format for developers to use while retaining compatibility with the old format. It'd boost you a ton in the ease-of-creating-widgets category. Also, from what I've seen, it looks very simple to have Dashboard widgets compatible with Konfabulator.

[johnq]

No, he means that someone would have thought to have the widget architecture simply be composed of a web page, not to be able to display web page objects in widgets.

Oh. No, I can't see us doing that any time soon.


Cheers,
Arlo Rose

Right, that looks like a can of worms from my brief dabblings in both Konfabulator widgets and Cocoa...

They are practically mutually exclusive, right? I mean you are expressly avoiding using nibs (which must make porting to other platforms much easier).

From what I've seen it's be a heck of a lot of work. I was mostly discussing it not a a feature that I want konfabulator to have but more a fundamental difference in Dashboard (which has it's benefits and drawbacks). In the end I think both will fit two different styles of users/developers.

I do think it's a rip-off but I also think it will turn out for the best for both parties.

[tiger'd]

Right, that looks like a can of worms from my brief dabblings in both Konfabulator widgets and Cocoa...

Not really. WebKit supports HTML display, JavaScript, Flash, CSS, you name it. Frame an NSWindow in the shape of a specific PNG, perform any internal modifications to the HTML needed, load the developer's widget into the webview, voila. Instant Dashboard-like implementation. :wink:

Oh, yeah, you need those cool 3D effects, too.

[johnq]

Edit: Ok maybe it could be done fairly easy. But then Arlo is chasing Apple, not the other way around.

I guess there is a year to play with the idea anyway. But I think ultimately they are 2 different things, But it is an awkward position. Stick to your vision (lean coding, easy graphics) or let a bigger company take it and kitchen sink-ify it (CSS/HTML/JS/Flash/QT)

[tiger'd]

Anyway, it's just HTML and JS. You've got a great community here (though that doesn't matter anyway - the whole internet supports HTML as a standard). And what's wrong with Arlo chasing Apple?

This way of coding widgets would introduce a lot more features and greater ease for sure.

[Synotic]

This is just a nitpick and isn't particularly relevant but I don't believe a PNG is being fed as the window shape and the web view within it. Rather it's simply the web view itself being drawn without the background or a window with the web view in it, again with no background. So if you include any PNGs within your page they automatically are transparent and blend with the background. I also think that if you explicitly set a background color for the page that it will appear as a square with that color. Again just a nitpick that's not particularly relevant... continue with your conversation

[johnq]

Right, but that's the "I don't know the details yet" part. Has Hyatt or Apple elaborated outside of registered-usersonly-ADC?

But thanks. I had assumed that was an option, again who knows.

[pbreit]

Konfabulator should have been architected like Dashboard from the beginning. There should never have been a non-free run-time. That prevents the user base from ever being large enough to attract developers.

Konfabulator has three things going for it:
1) works on pre-10.4 MacOS X
2) apparently being ported to Windows
3) could apply its expertise to create Dashboard developer tools and libraries

[johnq]

Problem is, Konfabulator is made such that only Arlo is making money (to simplify horribly). I mean that I can't really charge for my widget. I can put up a PayPal donation plea but that's about it. I guess the idea is that the user is the developer, wean us off of needing to pay people for things. But then, we buy Mac OS X Tiger and Apple "gives" us a development platform for Dashboard which can be designed in such a way as to allow for subscriptions, security and perhaps registration of a standalone gadget. (Not sure yet).

I think they are apples and oranges, but I like both apples and oranges.

Tough situation. Arlo is more optimistic and idealistic (in a good way but perhaps not a realistic way) than I am and feels users want the empowerment and freedom to make and share what they make. (From what I've read).

Personally I think people want to be spoon fed pretty gadgets for free and not make any themselves short of a miniscule creative minority.

It's...

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
-Robert Heinlein

meets...

"Karl Marx is wrong, Television is the opiate of the masses." - Tony Follari

Why make when you can use? To be sure there are tons of creative folk. But far more users are at best dabblers, than developers. I simply think that the idea that "the user is the developer" isn't ready for prime time yet. No one "got" OpenDoc. No one "gets" AppleScript/Studio in any significant number. Alas, a JavaScript runtime will appeal to users more for the quality of widgets available than for the ease of development under the hood, in my jaded opinion.

But god help you if you can't change the color of a GUI.

I do think that it could be remedied with a really elegant development tool...gotta eat...later.

[tiger'd]

This is just a nitpick and isn't particularly relevant but I don't believe a PNG is being fed as the window shape and the web view within it. Rather it's simply the web view itself being drawn without the background or a window with the web view in it, again with no background. So if you include any PNGs within your page they automatically are transparent and blend with the background. I also think that if you explicitly set a background color for the page that it will appear as a square with that color. Again just a nitpick that's not particularly relevant... continue with your conversation

Yeah, I knew that. The the window is transparent, but the views are not, so it creates the effect of the window being that shape.

[wrlee]

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but our internal versions of Konfabulator have had the ability to display web page objects (and other fun things) for quite some time. They just aren't well tested enough to make it into public builds (yet).
Cheers,
Arlo Rose

This post was 2004! What ever happened to this feature?

Bill...

[wwarsin]

yes what happened, maybe im missing something but how come widgets dont support this yet?

[Jonathan S.]

yes what happened, maybe im missing something but how come widgets dont support this yet?

I have no idea to what was being referred back in that 2004 quote (a little before my time), but this is definitely something in the works as we speak. FWIW, it's not a simple problem to solve correctly (i.e. w/o bloating the runtime download size or regressing the performance improvements we worked so hard on for YW4). But, we know you want it (and so do we). So, stay tuned (and, this time we mean it).

And now for the shameless plug: those lucky folks who join us at Developer Day on June *7* [thanks JC for catching the typo] will get more info on this and other upcoming features (as well as the ability to provide feedback first-hand). There are still a few open spaces, so sign up now.