Basics4Mac - Creating Dashboard Widgets from Web Pages

Make your own widgets

Selecting an area in Safari
Click to see a larger image

Your Dashboard is where you find Widgets, small, one-trick pony applications that bring you useful information such as weather maps or movie listings. Learn more about the Dashboard and Widgets here.

You can add Widgets to your Dashboard, but now you can create your own Widgets as well from parts of Safari web pages.

Let's say that you would like to make a Widget of the daily Dilbert cartoon. Here's how you would go about doing it:

Go to the web page in Safari that you want to make a Widget from. In this case, www.dilbert.com.
Click the icon of the scissors on the Safari toolbar.
The web page will become "greyed out". Move the cursor around the web page and sections of the page will become highlighted.
Select and then click on the section of the page you want to make into a Widget. Edit handles will appear around the selection. You can drag the handles to change the size of the selection.
When you have your selection the size you want it, click on the Add button on the top right.

Your Dashboard will then open and the part of the web page you selected will appear on your Dashboard as a new Widget.

The Widget you created will always have the most current version the web page section you selected. In the case of the Dilbert cartoon, each day the current cartoon will show on the Dashboard just as it shows on Dilbert.com.