[Etoile-dev] Dashboard

[David Chisnall]

I have spent some time with Tiger now, and Dashboard is still odd.   
For one thing, it adds a mode to the UI, which is not good -  
especially since it is very easy to forget that it exists when it is  
not active.
One thing that makes it a lot more useful is adding a default which  
puts it in testing mode.  In this mode, you can drag dashboard  
widgets between the dashboard and the main desktop.  In this way, the  
dashboard is just a slightly out-of-the-way storage space.  Since the  
space is the size of the screen, you can fit a lot on it, which is nice.
How does this relate to Étoilé?  Because I think Dashboard is an  
excellent prototype of how a shelf should work.  I start dragging  
something, and hit F12 (in the corner of my keyboard, easy to hit),  
and the shelf appears (full screen).  I release the mouse button, and  
the item is dropped on the shelf.  I drag things off by doing exactly  
the same in reverse.  Dashboard only allows widgets to be dragged to  
the shelf, but in Étoilé, every kind of (UI) object should be  
storable in this way.  By using the entire screen as a shelf, we get  
a fully spacial storage space, which is much nicer than the small  
grid-arranged NeXT shelf.

Thoughts?