Filed under: Productivity, Freeware, Friday Favorite
Friday Favorite: Dasher
Another Friday Favorite, our weekly opportunity to gush over one of our favorite apps.
This week I'm going with an oldie but goodie that I use every day. Way back when Dashboard first appeared, my biggest problem with it was that I simply forgot about it. My main use of Dashboard is for displaying information that I want to remember, e.g. appointments with iCal Events, iCal ToDos with DoBeDo, the weather, etc. However, for this to be really useful it needs to be in front of my face a lot. And since I generally tend to forget to invoke Dashboard on my own this pretty much fails.
Enter the basic preference pane app Dasher, which does one simple, but amazingly useful thing: it automatically invokes the Dashboard after a set period of time. Everytime I step away from my Mac and return, the Dashboard is displayed with my appointments, etc. so that now they're in my face enough for me to remember them and Dashboard finally works for me.
Dasher is a free download from Splasm Software. It's an old piece of software that has not been updated in quite some time, but it still works fine on my 10.5.7 machine.
Incidentally, there's another way to accomplish something similar using an OS X screen-saver. DashSaver (donation requested) from High Earth Orbit installs as a standard screen saver and will also display the Dashboard after a set period of time.
This week I'm going with an oldie but goodie that I use every day. Way back when Dashboard first appeared, my biggest problem with it was that I simply forgot about it. My main use of Dashboard is for displaying information that I want to remember, e.g. appointments with iCal Events, iCal ToDos with DoBeDo, the weather, etc. However, for this to be really useful it needs to be in front of my face a lot. And since I generally tend to forget to invoke Dashboard on my own this pretty much fails.Enter the basic preference pane app Dasher, which does one simple, but amazingly useful thing: it automatically invokes the Dashboard after a set period of time. Everytime I step away from my Mac and return, the Dashboard is displayed with my appointments, etc. so that now they're in my face enough for me to remember them and Dashboard finally works for me.
Dasher is a free download from Splasm Software. It's an old piece of software that has not been updated in quite some time, but it still works fine on my 10.5.7 machine.
Incidentally, there's another way to accomplish something similar using an OS X screen-saver. DashSaver (donation requested) from High Earth Orbit installs as a standard screen saver and will also display the Dashboard after a set period of time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave said 6:35PM on 6-19-2009
DashSaver looks interesting. I always thought a feature like that should be built-in to OX X.
Reply
Avian said 6:47PM on 6-19-2009
The first thing I do on any mac I own is disable dashboard.
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go2jo said 7:16PM on 6-19-2009
I don't bother with DashBoard at all, if I can help it. I've used Amnesty Singles to convert widgets I use everyday, like iCal Events, DoBeDo, and the iCal widget to desktop apps. I then set those three apps to launch at startup. The first time they open I set the level I want them at. I choose desktop so they don't float, and then use Dockless.app to always hide their icons in the dock. Once the icons are hidden, they always remain hidden, even between reboots. Less clutter in the dock too.
It seems like a lot of work at first, but after initial setup, it's the best thing for me to watch my appointments, make to-do's, and have a perpetual calendar on the desktop, all on my second monitor. Even when I didn't have a second monitor, it was easier than having to go to DashBoard all the time. My events were always visible on the side of my display. I didn't miss anything.
We all have different ways to work. To each their own. :)
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gorfgorf said 7:53PM on 6-19-2009
Why not just use applescript to do this?
E.g.
try
activate application "Dashboard"
end try
(The reason the "try" is in there is because it gives an error message, but it still works.)
You could have a recurring event in iCal trigger this applescript, or you could set it up as an idle script that gets triggered after a certain amount of inactivity. You could probably also recreate the functionality of DashSaver with minimal difficulty. Why use shareware?
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gorfgorf said 8:09PM on 6-19-2009
P.S. If you want to write a script that checks to see if the screen saver is running or not, just use something like this...
tell application "System Events"
set myvariable to exists process "ScreenSaverEngine"
end tell
myvariable will be either true or false, depending on whether the screen saver is on...
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Robert said 5:33AM on 6-20-2009
I use Dashboard Kickstart:
http://www.alwintroost.nl/?id=40
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