Using the Built-In Widgets (i.e., Weather)
Leopard comes with a number of widgets, and there are literally thousands more you can download for free, but for now let’s learn how one of those built-in widgets works, because once you get the hang of one, they all kinda work similarly. So first, make Dashboard visible (click on its Dock icon or press F4 on your keyboard or F12 on older keyboards). One of the most popular is the Weather widget (shown above). By default, it shows you the weather in Cupertino, California (where Apple is headquartered), but you can change it to almost any city you’d like by moving your cursor over the widget. When you do this, a tiny “i” button will appear in the bottom-right corner of the widget. Click on that tiny “i” and this flips the widget over to reveal its control panel, where you can either enter a city, state, or zip code in the search field. Now press the Return key on your keyboard, and as long as you’re connected to the Internet, it will search for your city. When it finds your city (it just takes seconds), it will display it in the search field. If it doesn’t find your city (perhaps you live in a really small city—pop. 241), you can choose a nearby larger city, which it’s more likely to find. There’s also a checkbox that lets you display the low temperature for the city you’re going to be monitoring. When you click the Done button, it turns back around and displays the current weather conditions and forecast for that city (it actually goes to Accuweather.com to gather the latest weather report), and will update each day automatically when you open Dashboard.