Widget Watch: CharacterPal

When Tiger first came out I was all over the widget scene, but lately I hardly ever find myself hitting F12 anymore. Although there are some widgets I find rather useful, I don't like the memory usage or having to invoke the Dashboard layer. Generally, I'd much rather have things in the menubar, if possible.

CharacterPal does strike me as being just the right kind of thing for the Dashboard layer. This widget lists a bunch of unusual glyphs (e.g. €, £, ®) and when you hover over them it gives you the keyboard shortcut to type that glyph. It can also give you HTML character codes as well. Taco widgets has also conveniently made the widget work on the desktop as well (automating the old dev mode trick). So if you're a blogger like me and constantly forgetting the keyboard shortcut for the euro sign (opt + shift + 2), check out CharacterPal.

[Via MacNN]

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Source: http://www.tacowidgets.com/widgets/characterpal/

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Software Odds and ends Widget Watch

When Tiger first came out I was all over the widget scene, but lately I hardly ever find myself hitting F12 anymore. Although there are...

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artifex

followup on my OT question: Mat Lu rules. He sent me to a MacWorld URL that did something just slightly different from what I did before, and it worked. YAY!

Two different writers from TUAW, Erica and Mat, have helped me out in email in the last couple of weeks. It was never expected, but is very much appreciated. As a "switcher" who is his friends' go-to for PC help, I have to say it's a humbling experience to have the reversed role when it comes to Macs, but you make it easier :)

January 05 2007 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Scott Falkner

Doesn't hold a sputtering candle to PopChar. That's on my Gotta-have-it list.

January 05 2007 at 11:18 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

artifex

Ok, this is sorta off topic, but: I'd like to be able to use this widget, but I turned off my Dashboard and Expose using a utility a while back, and even though I tried to turn it back on last week, when I hit F12 and stuff it doesn't work. Any idea what I should be looking for, in order to fix it? :( :(

January 05 2007 at 10:44 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Patrick

Ok, so TUAW doesn't allow HTML in posts or I typed it incorrectly... here's the link:

http://www.applemorphic.com/2007/01/05/friday-software-spotlight-popchar/

January 05 2007 at 7:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Patrick

On a related note, check out my review post about PopChar.

January 05 2007 at 7:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Trevor

There is also my Symbols widget:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/symbols.html

Much like CharacterPal but also does LaTeX.

January 05 2007 at 2:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh*

Matthew Waters -- thanks a lot, I guess I was thinking it was an uppercase I and now a lowercase L. :)