Dashboard Widgets for iPhone

This Wrox Blox will help you create a simple RSS feed widget to run on your iPhone (or iPod Touch) using Dashcode. After a brief tour of Dashcode's capabilities, you'll get right to the task of creating the widget. You will choose a template, provide an RSS feed URL, set customizable attributes, change the UI of your widget, design a homescreen icon for your widget, test your widget and upload your code to a server. In just about an hour's worth of work, you'll be running a Dashcode-created widget on your iPhone. After spending this time inside Dashcode, you should be able to use the other templates available in Dashcode to create other useful Web tools.

For example, you can use the Custom template to create completely new tools that integrate Google search functions. You can add Ajax and even server-side code to your widgets, and integrate with third-party APIs (like Flickr) to provide users with an even richer experience.

Table of Contents

First Things First: What's a Widget? 1
Creating Widgets 3
Getting the Tools 3
A Quick Tour of Dashcode 4
Creating Your First Web Widget 8
Step 1: Pick the Right Template 9
Step 2: Provide an RSS Feed URL 9
Step 3: Set Attributes 11
Step 4: Working with the UI 11
Step 5: Design a Home Screen Icon 13
Step 6: Test and Share 14
Behind-the-Scenes Look at Your Widget 15
Using Your New Widget on the iPhone 18
Making UI Changes to Your Widget 19
Conclusion 20
About Thomas Myer 21
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