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OSXGuide: Run Widgets for Free with Konfabulator 2.1
Posted by: admin on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 06:38 AM
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 Nothing quite rocks the house as much as getting for free a software application that would have cost you some bucks the week before. Such is the case of Konfabulator 2, a nifty little Mac utility that allows users of versions of OS X before 10.4 to enjoy useful little "widgets" on their screen. Widgets are small, javascript applications that aren't constrained by ordinary application windows and freely float over or under anything else you may have on your screen. Examples of useful widgets include weather forecast displays, time displays, photo displays, stock market tickers, etc. Apple has made a big push to get people to crave widgets, as it has included built-in widget display functionality in it's latest OS, 10.4 Tiger.
But what if you want to play with some widgets and only have 10.2 or 10.3? That's where Konfabulator comes in handy. Konfabulator was around before Apple's 10.4, and some feel that Apple got the whole idea of widgets from the Konfabulator developers. This may have meant sour grapes to Konfabulator's developers, except that Yahoo came along and bought the company in order to give the software away for free. In this tutorial we show you how you can download and install Konfabulator 2.1 entirely free, and start running cool widgets on your desktop in most versions of OS X.
Konfabulator 2.1, as mentioned, is now a free download. What you get for free is exactly what would have cost you money only a few short days ago. So why not get started and download the program (And for your Windoze friends, there's even a WinXP version).
Once downloaded and decompressed, you can open the Konfabulator DMG file. Ooooh, pretty!
The next step is to simply drag the application to your Hard Drive. The Applications folder is the recommended spot, but it shouldn't matter if you want to place it elsewhere. Now you can open the program to be presented with the installer. The installer process is actually very informative and has a built-in mini tutorial on using widgets with Konfabulator.
The installer automatically activates and will show you where to find the toolbar menu for the program. This is where you can activate and de-activate your widgets, as well as access the Konfabulator settings.
Once you're through the install process, you'll have several default widgets on your screen:
The Konfabulator installer gives you even more widgets you can select and run on your system:
And, finally, if you want to get more free widgets, you can head over to the new page at Yahoo dedicated to them:
Enjoy!
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