Hi. A new version of the widget is in the works, and should be finished within days (of June 30th, 2009).

In the meantime, please check out my latest project: Toy Box, a 2D physics "sandbox" for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's available now on the App Store.

Wikipedia Widget

version 0.9.2 for mac os 10.4+
updated June 12th, 2007 at 7:54pm

download

A Dashboard widget for browsing the free, user-created encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Search for articles and view from the Dashboard, complete with pictures and links.

June 13, 2007 5:02am

For anyone experiencing issues with 0.9.2, please redownload above. A bug has been fixed that caused inoperability when Safari was not in its default location. All should be well now. Please note that with Safari 3 installed, the widget doesn't have search history. This functionality will return when a webkit bug is fixed.

June 12, 2007 11:54am

Version 0.9.2 is now available. It now works with Safari 3 Beta installed, but Safari 3 users will have to suffer without search history for now. All other users will be unaffected. I apologize for the paltry update – more is in store, but I'm pressed for time while school is in session.

0.9.2 (June 12, 2007 11:54am)

• Compatible with Safari 3 Beta
• Korean localization courtesy of Dong-sung Kim

(for previous changes, see the change log)

Features:

• Compatible with any language wikipedia, just enter the 2 (sometimes 3 or more) letter code on the back. Defaults to English.
• External links open in your preferred browser.
• Click the 'wikipedia' button to the left of the search field to open the current article or search term in Safari.
• The little '?' button to the left of the search field fetches a random article.
• Back and forward buttons with page caching.

Known bugs:

• External links that include most unicode characters can't be sent to your preferred browser.

ToDo:

• Make it compatible with other MediaWiki sites
• Set a time-out on page-grabbing.
• Create a better looking collapsed state.
• Add up and down scroll buttons at the bottom of the scroll bar.
• Come up with a way to open the same article in another language, like the side menu of Wikipedia.org's interface.
• Display a contextual menu when a link is right-clicked.
• The current "temporary" user interface has lasted much longer than I had planned. This needs to be beautified.
• Clean up and comment the code, to simplify the lives of those borrowing code for their own projects.
• Fancify this page a bit, but nothing extravagant.
• Put out a release significant enough to be called ONE POINT OHH. One of these days it'll happen, I promise.

Let me know if you come across any articles that won't display, or any other bugs.

created by sean billig

If you would like to submit a bug, or make a comment or suggestion, please email me at

sbillig at whatsinthehouse dot com

If you especially enjoy this widget, and would like to support development, you can donate through paypal. Many, many late night hours have gone into development, and many more are planned. If you don't have a Mac, and would like to see this ported to Windows, I may be more likely to do so if you send some cash my way ;).

Download and Installation: Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Interested in the source code? Just download the file above. If you're on a Mac, right-click the .wdgt file, and select Show Package Contents. If you're on something else, just browse though the Wikipedia.wdgt directory. The guts are in Main.js.