Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) ushered in a new feature called Dashboard, a cool application that hosts and runs Widgets, small lightweight applications that can be summoned with a click of the mouse or a keystroke  (hotkey).

You can configure and customize Dashboard to your liking.  You can add, remove, and reposition widgets.  Customizing Dashboard starts off by clicking the plus sign that appears in the lower left corner of the screen when Dashboard is launched.

Dashboard can be configured via preferences just like any application that runs on Mac OS X.  Dashboard Preferences are set under the Dashboard and Expose area under in the Mac OS X System Preferences and there are two ways to get to it.

A Widget can be configured as long as it has preferences.

As of Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2 installing Widgets has been a breeze thanks to the Widgets Widget.  The Widget Widget was briefy described in the Configure and Customize Dashboard guide.

As described in the What is Dashboard? guide, Mac OS X ships with several Apple supplied Widgets.  In the Install a Widget guide, we described how a user can download and install Widgets to customize their Dashboard experience.

Here are two tricks that will make Dashboard do some really interesting things.