Aral Balkan

In a previous post, I mentioned that Flash in Dashboard widgets wasn't working well for me in Leopard. Specifically, I tried making one of my bunny widget via the cool new "Open in Dashboard" feature in Safari and I couldn't type in the input text field and the data exchange didn't work for me. Well, it must be an intermittent thing because today, it's working like a champ! :)

Yay, Flash works in Dashboard widgets on Leopard. That rocks!

To make your own Flash Dashboard widget, simple browse to the site that has your Flash application, control-click it and select Open in Dashboard, select the area that contains your Flash application, and press return.

Voilà, you have a Flash Dashboard widget!

Comments

• I wonder what the memory usage is like with multiple flash widgets displayed in separate dashboard widgets?

  by James Urquhart on 2007-10-29 22:16:31

• This "Open in Dashboard" feature does not work at all for me. After selecting an area of a web page and clicking "Add", the dashboard shows up all of a sudden, and... nothing happens! Absolutely nothing.

  by Andreas on 2007-11-19 01:50:41

• That's pretty wicked Aral. Thanks for the tip!

  by Greg Ferrell on 2007-10-28 22:39:05

• I'm loving the "Open in Dashboard" button in Safari - Leopard. One of those things I don't know how I lived without until now.

  by Josh Walsh on 2007-10-29 00:33:47

• Very cool indeed! I'm pretty sure Apple frowns upon putting any non Javascript behavioral stuff in those widgets. I remember seeing some dev docs when dashboard first came out that specifically mentioned not to use Flash, so I never really looked again.

  by Chad Udell on 2007-10-29 01:23:00

• I just added your site link at my PR7 flash related blog. Keep up good work!

  by Flanture on 2007-10-29 12:42:40

• Here's something that's just as cool (or maybe even cooler :o): http://snippage.gabocorp.com/ (And since it's "running on air' it's for Windows too ;))

  by Thomas on 2007-10-29 16:04:22

• I've been having an issue with widgets created this way not allowing get URLs. Has anyone else seen this or is it a known issue? Also once you create a widget this way can you save it and send it to others. It seems to be trapped in dashboard at this point. E

  by Eric on 2007-10-29 16:37:36

• Wow! I forgot about that feature somewhere in my excitement of Leopard. I could be wrong, but this feature does not work as easy for SWFObject pieces as for hard coded Flash objects. You can still select the portion of the webpage almost as easily though!

  by Steve James on 2007-11-06 07:09:47

• Wow! I better upgrade to Leopard now :-)

  by Briskar on 2007-11-22 21:54:41

• Hi Steve, My little bunny widget uses SWFObject and it worked for me :)

  by Aral on 2007-11-08 11:15:47

• I wonder, is there any way to create 'installable' widgets with Flash?

  by Nirth on 2007-11-08 21:19:57

• HI Aral.. i am one of the great fans.. you are execellent.. Let me introduce.. I am flash developer.. i am intrested in creating flash widgets...how can we make our flash content as one that can be used by peoples in their website.. Any info will be useful for me thanks in advance..

  by Saravanan.B on 2008-02-13 17:56:15

• Hi As newly registered user i just want to say hi to everyone else who uses this board :-)

  by Smeadramp on 2008-12-18 23:36:44