To reload a dashbord :
Open Dashboard (F12) and hit Command+R...
Nice !

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You mean reload a widget.

And it's such a nifty and quick transition!
As far as I know, no where did Apple demonstrate this.

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I like to work with one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse. I moved the Expose/Dashboard F-keys to F1-4 (instead of their default F9-12), and this allows me to use my left hand for Expose (F1-3) or Dashboard (F4) and to operate my mouse at the same time with my right hand.

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me too!

I also set F5 to Bring All to Front, so if some of the current app's windows are hidden i can pop them forward without having to activate Expose.

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i just bound the dashboard to my middle button(scroll button) on my mouse. that way if i want to quickly check dashboard I only click the scroll wheel and bamm!.

Now you have a perfectly good reason to buy a three button mouse!

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I've done the same. Finally a good use for that button!

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Don't you guys use that button to open a link in a new tab in Safari? :P

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Yeah, I use the middle button for open-in-new-window in Safari, but as Exposé-show-all-windows-in-all everywhere else. I also add the command key to the 3 Exposé and Dashboard keys, because my F-keys are heavily used in CodeWarrior (which I use 8-10 hours a day).

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It's a pity you can't assign actions to how fast you spin the mouse wheel.



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N.B. : for french users the command + "=" short key won't operate and command+"-" (underscore keybord key) shall be used instead...
and then that just rocks !

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On a german keyboard it's command-´ (Accent Acute).


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Same on Swedish. Please update the hint for the key for different countrys so it's easier laters on to find out how.

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Command - "+" on portuguese keyboards. Apparently it's command + <key immediately to the left of the Backspace key>.

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That's all folks.

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For Italian users: "cmd" + "ì"

Thanks for the hint!

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:: And ::

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For spanish people: Cmd-"¡" (open exclamation close to backdelete)

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Why not just use "fn"+"F12" which is defined for iBooks?

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The plus button is a silly addition to the OS X UI. They already had a perfectly good method for dealing with stacks of icons -- they call it the dock.

Dashboard should have simply adopted the user's settings for dock behavior for the widget bar. If the user sets the dock as auto-hidden, then the widget bar should be the same. If the user has the dock on the left edge of the screen, then the widget bar should be there, too.

It would be a clear, non-clashing use of the same technique for both the "desktop" user space and the "widget" user space.

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I like... Nice idea... and when you switch to the Dashboard the Dock morphs into the new size (according to the widgets in /Library/Widgets) in the same method that the Quicktime windows smoothly resize during a normal to double size change.

Hmm... I can see it already in slow-mo when I press shift+F12...

Dale

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Perfect!

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Doesn't work on my iBook with a Dvorak layout; for Dvorak, it's Cmd-].

---
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

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I'm having the same problem. They must be reading the raw keyboard somehow. Seems to be a common problem. The Java VM used to have really bad problems with that. All hot keys stayed QWERTY.

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The shortcut for Spanish keyboards is Command-¡. (That's an inverted exclamation mark.)

By the way, it is not necessary to click inside the plus symbol to open the bar. Just move your mouse to the lower-left corner of your screen and click. Fitts' law!

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Blimey, how often do you guys change your widget-set? Opening the bar of available widgets shouldn't be something you do so often that it needs a keyboard shortcut.

Pete

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Ummmm ... how would one open a widget that's currently closed without using the widget bar? I don't leave every widget open; mostly, I leave them closed (the ones that I leave open are actually dragged to the desktop for always-there access). So I use the widget bar quite a bit...

-rob.

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Widgets take a non-trivial quantity of resources to keep running (between 18 and 30 MB of physical RAM each, according to top), so I like to only keep the ones I use frequently open, in order to avoid unnecessary swapping under higher memory usage conditions, and open others when I actually need them.

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Thanks for the hint!
I found that for a German keyboard layout the shortcut is Command (Apfel) and the key left of backspace (accent, character obviously not displayable here).

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It's the same on Swedish keyboards.

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Shift+12 opens dashboard in slow motion.

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how do I get rid of the slow motion effects? I want to be able to use the
shift-Fx keys for other apps! Also if you replace the F12 key with shift-F12 key
in the ControlPanel, pressing shift-F12 then has the effect of opening the Dashboard and the slowly closing it! Not good.

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If you are looking for a way to open widgets via the keyboard, Spotlight can help. Just enter part of the name of the widget in the Spotlight menu followed by a space and the letter 'w'. Upon selecting the desired widget, Dashboard should open and land the it in the centre of the screen. Each time it does this it opens a new copy of the widget so, if you want to keep your Dashboard clear of clutter, it's only really useful if you know what is already open, meaning you need Dashboard open in the first place.

Thankfully, Spotlight is usable while the Dashboard is activated, albeit hidden by any widgets that happen to be in the top right corner of your screen – a problem for anyone that really needs to see what they are typing, I suppose.

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Just for the record, Tiger isn't actually mapping the shortcut as "Apple + '+'".
It maps it to tho actual key code.
If this doesn't make sense, let me put it this way. No matter what keyboard layout you are using, the shortcut will still be "Apple + 'the thing next to delete'".
I use DVORAK instead of QWERTY (by the way, its MUCH better), and the shertcut for me is "Apple + }".

~Matt

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