Web Clippings: Now I Love Dashboard

ByMike Moffit

I’ve long been anti-dashboard. I find that the widgets consume more RAM that is reasonable and can bog down systems not loaded up with memory and running on older hardware. Thankfully, I use a top-of-the-line 17” MacBook Pro with 6GB of RAM so don’t have to worry about processor speed or memory constraints. But I’ve never really used Dashboard.

Sure, Leopard was released in October, 2007, and I’ve been using it ever since. I even knew about Web Clippings, one of the myriad new features in the operating system. But until now I haven’t used them. We have several dozen security cameras throughout our retail stores, warehouses, and offices, and it’s often helpful for me to see the video stream from several of these cameras. While the web interface we have is perfectly functional, it is clunky, and I grew tired of navigating through many web pages any time I wanted to see what a camera is seeing.

The solution was web clippings, and now I have quite a few on my dashboard. I have local and regional Doppler radar, several security cameras (which I can see from home while connected to our virtual private network, or VPN), and quite a few other clippings. A quick press of F12 gives immediate access to all of this information, which would’ve taken over a minute to see before.

If you have not yet used this feature of MacOS X Leopard and Safari 3, check it out. All you need to do is click on the web clippings button in Safari’s toolbar, and then drag a box on a web page to make the clipping. Dashboard will open, and you can place the new widget wherever you’d like.

Similar Posts

  • AppleCare…To the Rescue

    While Apple’s products have significantly lower rates of failure than a lot of their competition, things do go wrong from time to time. When I got my iPhone 4S at launch, it would occasionally restart itself. At first, I thought nothing of it, considering I was coming from an Android device that rebooted itself so often that it might as well have been saying, “Hey, just in case you forgot you customized your splash screen, here it is again!”

    A couple of weeks ago, my phone didn’t just restart itself, but became a useless brick until I gave it a hard reset while plugged in. A quick Google search revealed this issue to be a symptom of hardware failure known in the diagnosis log as “panic.plist.” I checked my diagnosis log and there it was, three “panic.plist” occurrences in the past week. After a brief phone call with AppleCare, I was given the choice of sending the phone back to them and waiting close to a week for a replacement or to have a $730 hold placed on my credit card while they sent me a new phone overnight. As I didn’t have another phone to use, I opted for the latter.

    Normally, to have a phone sent overnight would cost $30 but because I had AppleCare, the fee was waived. Cut to today; the hold has been lifted and I have a shiny new iPhone that has yet to give me an issue. Granted, I was within the original one year warranty, but had this happened after that first year, I would be scavenging Craigslist for a cheap replacement. Thanks, AppleCare–I owe you one.

  • It's Snowing, Burlington Edition!

    To followup on Jimmy’s recent post about snow in the Waitsfield area, I’d like to note that it’s now snowing in the greater…

  • .Mac to MobileMe Update

    Apple sent out an email today to existing .Mac members, acknowledging that there have some bumps along the way in the transition from…

  • Will's iPad 2 Media Setup

    Everyone has a different use for their iPad, and often times accessorize accordingly. There are those that use their iPad outside and protect…

  • Relief Efforts in Japan

    As the effects of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan continue to broaden in scope, the need for relief effort funding remains critical….