Turn any part of a web page into a widget
To be honest, Dash Clipping doesn’t really turn any part of a web page into a widget. Instead, the application lets you select a part of a web page and view it from your desktop. Resize and position the screen until you’re happy with your selection. You’ll then be able to monitor it straight from your Dashboard. You can set the page to refresh at different times, from every hour up to every day.
Dash Clipping is simple to use, and it can be fun just to view a specific part of a web page instead of opening it up completely. Also, if you click on a link from the widget, it’ll open up directly in your browser. It’s a shame you can’t create multiple widgets and keep them all on your Dashboard though. Yet, even though Dash Clipping feels a bit rough on the edges, it’s a cool way to replicate the Web Clipping tool feature to come in Leopard.
Dash Clipping is a universal widget tool that allows you to turn any part of any web page into a Dashboard widget with a couple of clicks. Download it here. Feedback to the usual address.
If this sounds familiar it’s because it’s a shameless rip-off of the new Web Clipping tool that’s due in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and that I knocked together over the last 24 hours. If you watch the video on that page (and the keynote) carefully, you’ll realise all Apple’s doing is loading the whole web page but only showing part of it. There’s nothing clever about what they’re doing, and there’s nothing clever about my version either, though I did have to write part of it in Cocoa to get in working (you can almost do it with just an IFRAME, but not quite).