So I just recently bought a brand new 21.5" iMac and learned about one of the new OS X features called widgets. I decided to dive head first and download a few and try them out. I loved them! I thought, "Why not write a blog post about this?"

 

 

 

Before the list, let me tell you. I don't know why I waited soooo long to get a Mac (this is my first one). I had an old PC that ran all of those background tasks and that operating system they call Windows. I was living in hell. I bought the iMac in early January 2010 and I can safely say that I will die before I go back to a PC. The GUI is amazing, the speed and agility this computer has is beyond my expectations. I have no problems popping up 6 different programs with 18 different websites open in Safari while jamming out to Metallica, and with the below widgets all at one time. It is amazing. Not much else I can say. It was worth the 2,000 (including a 3 year maintenance plan and 500GB external hard drive).

So, for you Mac lovers who are designers like me, Cheers! Here's the list of Widgets that will help increase productivity in your daily designing, web developing world.

 

Symbol Caddy

Keeps a bunch of common special characters and HTML codes at your fingertips. “Keyboard mode” copies the special character to your clipboard and “HTML mode” copies the HTML entity code. On the back is an option to have the Dashboard automatically close after copy, making the workflow faster.

 

 

 

Lorem Ipsum

This widget generates Lorem Ipsum text. You can use this text as placeholder text for your print or web designs.A slider control gives you the power to select a variable portion of placeholder text or you can choose to copy a random paragraph, sentence, word, title or list to the clipboard.

 

 

Dashalytics

A free Dashboard Widget for Mac OSX Tiger that offers quick access to Google Analytics statistics.

 

 

 

 

 

Twidget

Easily update your Twitter status from Dashboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W3C Toolkit

W3C Tool Kit is a nifty little Widget with fast access to the W3C Markup and CSS Validator as well as their Link Checker.

CSS Typography Calculator

This widget helps you to calculate the relative font size and line height for your CSS document in order to align your websites content to a baseline grid. Once the values are entered, it copies the 2 lines of CSS into the pasteboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CSS Cheat Sheet

This widget displays the essential information from the CSS Cheat Sheet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: CSS

Quickly search CSS properties and attributes and easily copy them to your clipboard for use in any application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: HTML

Quickly search HTML tags and properties and easily copy them to your clipboard for use in any application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: PHP

Quickly Search PHP Functions and click to view the online PHP documentation or easily copy them to your clipboard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page Capture

The Page Capture widget is the easiest and fastest way to take a screenshot of web pages. No matter how long a page may be, the Page Capture widget will capture the entire page and save it to an image. Say “Good Bye!” to puzzling together multiple screenshots manually and let the Page Capture widget do all the work for you!

 

 

Color Schemer Galleria

Gives you access to over 1,000 color schemes from the Color Schemer Gallery.

 

 

 

 

I use almost every single one of these widgets on my projects and it helps make things easier, faster, and cooler. I love popping up the dashboard to see all of my widgets, it's such a cool effect.

 

So what do you think of these widgets? Are there some that you just can't live without that you would like to share? I'll update this list if more become available that are to die for. Until then, happy designing on a MAC!

 

BONUS!

Tweetdeck

Although this isn't a Mac widget, I feel it is necessary to promote. Tweetdeck is possibly one of the coolest programs available for both the Mac & PC. I highly recommend anybody who Tweets, FaceBooks-it, MySpaces-it, or has a LinkedIn profile. It consolidates all updates into one little handy, nifty, sleek interface. It's amazing, so download it now.

Tags: Design, develop, mac, Productivity, widgets

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.