Exploring Apple's Widget Manager in OS 10.4.2

Apple released OS 10.4.2 on Tuesday, bringing with it a number of goodies, like the new Widget manager. Widget manager allows you to do a number of useful things, including disabling widgets, deleting widgets and "testing out" a widget before installing it for good. Let's take a look. More after the jump.

Prior to 10.4.2, Safari moved downloaded widgets directly to your "widgets" folder on its own, essentially installing them for you. Convenient, but also a potential security issue. Now Safari asks "Do you want to install and open the widget ___?" in a dialog box with two options: "Cancel" and "Install." Selecting "Cancel" leaves the widget alone at the download location you've specified for Safari, and "Install" takes you into test drive mode.

In test drive, the widget you just downloaded opens in Dashboard via a window all its own. From here you can test out its functionality, adjust its preferences and choose to either delete or keep it. Pretty nice.

Also new is the "manage widgets" option in the widgets bar. From here, you can launch the management widget which lists all the widgets you currently have installed on your system (meaning living in your "widgets" folder), sorted either by name or date. To deactivate an installed widget, simply deselect the checkbox to that widgets left. To delete an installed widget, click the minus symbol to its right. This brings up a dialog box that reads, "Do you want to move this widget to the trash?" Selecting "OK" does just that. It seems that the Apple widgets installed by default cannot be trashed by this method, however.