I've written a handful of widgets for the Mac OS X Dashboard, as well as a few other bits and pieces. Everything on this page is available to download free of charge and with no guarantees, although I will make an effort to fix any bugs that are brought to my attention.
Dashboard widgets for Mac OS X
Astrophysics Preprint Reader
Lists the latest batch of preprints from arXiv.org in a low-profile Dashboard widget. An information button alongside each article title gives access to the full abstract (including the author list). Clicking on the title takes you to the article's page on arXiv.org, where you can download a complete version of the article. The widget can display preprints from any of the available categories, but it's primarily intended for astrophysicists (hence the astronomy-themed graphics).
New features in version 2 include the ability to interactively resize the widget (up to a maximum of 640x480 pixels) via a tool at the bottom-right corner and a new online update mechanism that allows you to keep up-to-date with future developments at the push of a button.
Disclaimer: the arXiv.org RSS feed used by this widget "is experimental and may be changed without notice". In the event that this breaks the widget, I'll try to fix it as quickly as possible.
Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. See below for download and installation instructions.
Green Party News Widget
This was my first attempt at writing a widget for the Mac OS X Dashboard. It captures the RSS news feed from the web site of the Green Party of England & Wales and displays it on the Dashboard.
The current version also includes links to the latest videos from the new Green Party of England & Wales YouTube channel, as well as an option to restrict the items displayed to a given date range.
Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. See below for download and installation instructions.
Projet Horizon News Widget
A widget to display the latest news from the website of Projet Horizon. Note that this widget is intended mainly for members of Projet Horizon and many of the links require a password to view.
The widget comes in two versions with different interfaces: simple blue-and-white or fancy with a semi-transparent content pane.
- Download the Projet Horizon News Widget (simple version).
- Download the Projet Horizon News Widget (fancy version).
- Submit feedback.
Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. See below for download and installation instructions.
Downloading and installing the widgets
Click the download button to download the widget. When the widget download is complete, follow the instructions for your browser.
Safari
- display the Dashboard
- click the plus sign to display the Widget Bar
- click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
Other browsers (e.g. Firefox)
- unarchive the zip file
- place the widget in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder
- display the Dashboard
- click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar
- click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
Other software
IDL language definition file for QLColorCode plugin
If, like me, you're a Mac OS X 10.5 user who does a lot of programming in IDL, you've probably been annoyed by the fact that Quick Look doesn't display previews for IDL source files. The QLColorCode plugin by Nathan Gray allows Quick Look to generate syntax-highlighted previews of most types of source code. By default, QLColorCode doesn't recognize IDL code - in fact, it treats files with the .pro extension as Prolog source code, leading to incorrect syntax highlighting.
I've written a language definition file for IDL that can be used with the QLColorCode plugin to generate previews of IDL source files with the 'correct' syntax highlighting. You can download it here (if the file appears in your browser window then save it as plain text). To install the file, follow these simple steps:
- if you don't already have the QLColorCode plugin, download it and follow the installation instructions
- control-click on the plugin in Finder and choose "Show Package Contents" from the context menu
- once inside the plugin, navigate to Contents/Resources/override/langDefs/
- download the language definition file and place it in the above folder
If you just installed QLColorCode for the first time, you may need to log out and back in again for the plugin to be activated. Following these instructions will override the default behaviour of the plugin, which is fine if you never use Prolog (if you want to be able to handle both then it's more complicated - contact me if you need to do this).
Requires Mac OS X 10.5 and the QLColorCode plugin for Quick Look.