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Poll: What are your preferences for Dashboard preferences?
I have a question for any Mac users who might be reading. Specifically those of you who a) have Tiger installed and b) use Dashboard regularly.
How do you like your Widget preferences saved?
Allow me to be more specific…
Most of the widgets work like this: When you create a new instance of a widget by dragging it out of the tray, it loads up some default settings. For example, Weather and World Clock load up for the “closest city” you specified in System Prefs. Other widgets — like the Dictionary — don’t really have settings to speak of. They load up the same every time.
With these widgets, when you close them, your settings are lost. The next time you drag out an instance of that widget, it loads the default settings. Allow me to demonstrate in this short (10.6 MB) Quicktime movie (thank you Snapz Pro).
There is one odd duck, though (there always is), and it’s the Stocks Widget.
Stocks saves your settings no matter what. You can close it, then drag it back out, and your list of stocks is saved. This is a little strange, but it kind of makes sense. There is one disadvantage, and that is you cannot realistically have multiple instances of the Stocks Widget open. Your settings will be saved just fine as long as your Mac is running (which can be for a very long time, mind you), but restart and BAM — your preferences for the newest instance clobber all the old ones.
So, let’s say I had created a Dashboard Widget that is very much like the Stocks Widget (oh wait, I did). How do you think the preferences should be saved?
Please leave your vote in the comments. Thanks!