CSS Tweak Dashboard Widget

This is the first widget that I’ve ever made, it’s been really great to get into the guts of how they work.

For those of you that have never seen inside a widget, they are simply a combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript. So if you are a web developer, you most likely already have the knowledge and skills to make a fully functional dashboard widget.

Actually, I cheated a little with the CSS Tweak widget. Well, not so much cheated, but I didn’t code the whole thing in Textmate. I managed to be one of those lucky people who had an installed version of Dashcode on their new MacBook Pro. I used Dashcode to develop this widget from start to finish and I really only have great things to say about it.

Despite the program crashing a fair bit (which is understandable considering it is a pre/non-release version) it provides wysiwyg and debugging features that go a long way to help you set up your widget and get it working exactly how you want it. Plus, it has a gorgeous interface as you would expect from an Apple developed tool.

Anyway, more about the widget itself. The widget will accept CSS files dropped onto it (which is annoyingly unintuative, but Apple fails to provide file input any other way). Once you drop a CSS file in, you are presented with tweaking options. You can choose to enable or disable any of the options, just the same as on the CSS Tweak website. Once you hit tweak, the CSS file is sent to the CSS Tweak server, tweaked, and then sent back and saved in the same location as your original file.

I hope that people find this tool useful. It will definately save time not having to visit a website, you can simply drop your file in from anywhere and you’re done.

This is of course the first version, and there will no doubt be a few bugs to iron out. Please let me know via email (andy [at] this domain) if you find anything out of whack. I should mention, you do need to be connected to the internet for this widget to work.

Download Widget