# RE: widgets on rails?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-widgets-on-rails/56079>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 28, 2006, 1:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-widgets-on-rails/56079 "2006-03-28T01:07:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![emanon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/ecae2f/32.png) [@emanon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/emanon)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 1:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-widgets-on-rails/56079/1 "2006-03-28T01:07:41Z")

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> Has anybody played around with using Rails to create Mac OS X  
> Dashboard Widgets?
> 
> Or is that just sick and wrong?

Neither, in my opinion but from my understanding, Mac OS X Widgets (and  
Yahoo! Widgets) are built, for the most part, with HTML+CSS+Javascript.  
I think you can also leverage built-in Mac OS X libraries and run _Ruby_  
scripts inside your widget since Ruby is shipped with the OS. Alas, RoR  
does not come shipped with Mac OS X (yet?).

You could build web services with RoR to feed your widget but the actual  
widgets only use client-side web technology.

[developer.apple.com/macosx/dashboard.html](http://developer.apple.com/macosx/dashboard.html)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![emanon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/ecae2f/32.png) [@emanon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/emanon)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-widgets-on-rails/56079/2 "2006-03-28T18:47:05Z")

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On 3/27/06, Dean M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> You could build web services with RoR to feed your widget but the actual  
> widgets only use client-side web technology.
> 
> [developer.apple.com/macosx/dashboard.html](http://developer.apple.com/macosx/dashboard.html)

well – I think it may depend on if dashboard supports hrefs. if it  
does, you could probably actually do it if you just put a javascript  
statement in the widget. the JS would be a localhost href to a Ruby  
script which would launch WEBrick, and that script could then forward  
the “browser” (Dashboard) to a Rails app running on localhost using  
WEBrick and SQLite.

and from there on in, yeah, web services, or Ajax, or anything really.

I do actually think there’s a very strong possibility of sick and  
wrong here, to be honest with you. (on the bright side, it’s also a  
great excuse to buy a Mac.)

–  
Giles B.  
[www.gilesgoatboy.org](http://www.gilesgoatboy.org)