Web standards on the move
I've consistently argued that Web standards — including XHTML, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript — can do more than we give them credit for and have plenty of room for growth. Case in point: Apple Computer's Dashboard. When Steve Jobs demoed this forthcoming technology to developers last week, he called it "Expose for widgets," referring to a current OS X feature that tiles (and scales) all open windows for easy scanning and quick access. In OS X 10.4, aka Tiger, Dashboard will extend the Expose idea to a special class of small, single-purpose apps: calculators, stock viewers, media players. You hit one key to produce a tiled display of these "gadgets" and another to dismiss them.