14 DAY TRIAL // Widgets, and the Dashboard that houses them, are in a way as big an advancement as the introduction of icons and the desktop. While widgets are nowhere near as widespread and an integral part of the computing experience as the icons are, they are nevertheless going forward slowly but surely. These little applications can be used for anything from checking weather and stocks to keeping notes and track of time. Their greatest strength is that they only do one thing, and do it well. However, this strength can also become a weakness. Much like the desktop, the dashboard environment, while theoretically infinite, is restricted for practical purposes by the size of your screen. And when you want more widgets than you have room for, you have a problem. Enter Virtual Dashboard.
What it does
Similar to the programs that enhance your desktop by allowing you to have several different ones and switch between them at will, Virtual Dashboard will add depth to your widgets. By letting you create different sets of widgets for different purposes and changing between them, Virtual Dashboard lets you have all the widgets you ever wanted without the fear of having them overlap or the need to keep hiding and showing them.
Working with it
At the core of the functionality that Virtual Dashboard offers lies the 'set.' This is any number of widgets that you group together. You can have one for the latest information, one for use while working and one for when you want to decide what you want to do with your free time. You can make as many sets as you want, and each one can have any widgets whatsoever and you can even have the same widget be part of multiple sets.
Creating Sets is simply a matter of choosing a name and then moving the desired widgets from the available list on the left to the contents of the set on the right. Next to each widget, there is a checkbox that lets you choose between having the widget in its normal Dashboard layer or at the desktop level. Additionally, each set can have its own customizable keyboard shortcut for fast switching. In case you have an extensive list of installed widgets, but don't actually make use of all of them, you can disable the ones you don't need and re-enable them at a later date. This is good for trimming the list of widgets that can otherwise grow quite big.
Editing existing sets is down through an identical interface to creating them. And should be very easy if you have already created a set.
To Dashboard or not to Dashboard
The main purpose of this application is to provide additional functionality to the Dashboard by letting you have many sets of widgets for many different purposes. While it does indeed do this, the implementation is lacking when it comes to interaction. Once you have all your sets nicely defined, you can easily switch between them using the Menubar item or the keyboard shortcuts? The problem is that you cannot use the keyboard shortcuts while in Dashboard and in order to switch using the Menubar item, you have to actually leave the dashboard. As such, any change of sets must be implies leaving the Dashboard if you were in it and then starting it up again so you can actually see the results. What comes out of all this is a hobbled interaction ant leaves you avoiding the Virtual Dashboard menu after a time. This annoyance can be diminished by making use of a preferences option that automatically launches the dashboard whenever you change a set, however, this can potentially cause problem elsewhere.
Because of the very poor interaction with the Dashboard itself, one option is to make the widgets in the sets you create Desktop level, thus eliminating the need to go into the Dashboard and giving you a decent interaction with the menu for switching within sets. All in all this is the best way to make use of this program, which gives you all of the advantages and almost no disadvantages. One thing that is quite frustrating however is the fact that there is no keyboard shortcut for hiding and showing the desktop widgets in the current set. When used this way, the option to display the dashboard whenever you change sets becomes a major source of frustration so it has to be one or the other.
Half Baked
While such a program is undoubtedly valuable for those who make heavy use of widgets, Virtual Dashboard is unfortunately not all it could be. It needs a widget to allow you to do everything from within the Dashboard itself, not to mention the fact that it needs to provide much better support for the shortcuts. As it stands, it is a tool for enhancing Dashboard that you can only use while outside Dashboard? Not ideal.
The Good
Adds depth to Dashboard and lets you manage massive amounts of Widgets.
The Bad
Very poorly implemented and a chore to use, makes using your left hand to scratch your right ear seem the most natural thing.
The Truth
The idea behind the program is sound; however, it needs a bit more work to be truly user-friendly. As it stands, the best way of using it is nothing like the purpose it was intended for.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
