Exploring the Leopard 300 – Dashboard, Front Row, ICal, Quick Look
In part 3 of Exploring the Leopard 300, we will look at the Dashboard, Front Row, ICal & Quick Look.
DASHBOARD
I’m a huge fan of Mac OS X Dashboard app. Its a real time saver, I have many widgets running and they keep me all the information I need in a birds eye view. You always need to try out new releases and alternates to suit your needs.
- Web Clip: Clip any web page and make it a widget. When the page updates at source, your widget is also updated
- Dashboard Movies widget Movies Widget in Dashboard: Good app, not so good for my part of the world yet
- Sync Dashboard Widget Settings with .Mac: .Mac now MobileMe, sync your dashboard settings on all Macs
Its important to note with the release of Leopard, Dashcode – the code base for dashboard widget creation also got updated. I’ll just mention the important updates: Dashcode IDE, Code Snippets, Widget UI Layout Canvas, Instant-On JavaScript Debugger, Advanced Source Code Editor, Automatic Packaging and Deployment, Widget Templates
FRONT ROW
Front Row is a great entertainment application built in Mac OS X. It got revamped in the Leopard release with the following:
- Front Row: In their own words:
Sit back and enjoy all of your digital media full screen on your Mac with Front Row. Now built in to Mac OS X Leopard. - AppleTV like interface: Leopard brings the sleek and smart AppleTV interface in Front Row
- DVD Playback in Front Row: Its a great experience to Full Screen DVD playback directly from Front Row
- Streaming iTunes Content: Itunes Streaming content too directly in Front Row
- Movie Previews: No need to go via web to watch new trailers, enjoy them in the comfort off Front Row
ICAL
When I switched to Apple from windows, initially I selected the familiar Microsoft Entourage environment. Later on during sync issues, I would come across ICal and started to like the soft, simple and inviting interface. Once I decided to use Mail, Address Book & ICal combination, I really enjoyed the ICal Experience. With the Leopard release, ICal became a very stable platform. UPDATE: Currentlt my ICal is synced with Goolge Calenders like a charm, where Google handles all syncing between my Mac, Google Calendar and my Blackberry Curve. And that too all on the net. No cables, no bluetooth connections.
- Improved iCal Interface: Great Interface, actually the best Calendering UI yet
- Inline Editing in iCal: Make changes and additions directly on the event via the Inline Editor
- Event Dropbox: Share all the information about the event through the dropbox
- CalDAV Group Scheduling: ICal works on CalDAV support servers making sure data portability
- Auto Pick: Once everyone is talking, it becomes necessary to select a time when everyone can meet
- Availability Window: Before you send an invite, check participants availability
- Delegation: If you are busy, assign management of your calender to a collegue
- Offline Calendaring: ICal lets you make the changes when you are offilne, once connected it syncs the necessary info
- Office Hours: Define your working hours even for a given week
- iCal Reserve Rooms image Reserve Rooms and Equipment: The name says it all
- Default Alarms: ICal creates an alarm for all events you create
- Turn Off All Alarms: You can disable alarms for select events
QUICK LOOK
One of the best features of the Leopard release. Quick Look has saved me countless hours of opening documents and closing them instantly as they were not the ones I intended. The whole Cover Flow and Quick Look experience combines together to present User the ability to indentify the document/information they are looking for easily.
- Quick Look: In their own words:
Look inside any document without launching an application. Use Quick Look with documents, images, songs, and movies and get a large-size preview of the file. Flip through multipage documents, preview movies, even add images to Photo. You can use Quick Look in Finder, Mail, and Time Machine. - Full Screen Preview: Preview files full screen
- Multi-select: Quickly preview multiple files at once in a light table view or individually with slideshow controls.
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