Apple has recently, unofficially introduced the inclusion of Dashcode 1.0 with the lastest version of Developer Tools contained as a standard package with the current Intel Macs. Dashcode is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Dashboard widget development. For the less IT initiated, an IDE is essentially an application that allows you to rapidly create another application or in this case, a Dashboard widget with little or no knowledge of programming.
Although, very much in beta stages, Dashcode is a remarkable IDE. We took it for a test run and managed to come up with our own RSS widget in under 10 minutes! Dashcode comes armed with templates for the less ‘programmer inclined’, which allows the rapid creation and deployment of Dashboard widgets.
Another great leap ahead for Apple in its efforts to expand its ‘Widget Universe’. Although this is a welcome addition to the already expansive Developer Tools, there is currently little documentation on Dashcode itself and its Help file is still missing. In the interim, its pretty much guess work and heavy reliance on your familiarity of other Apple applications that use similar UI, e.g. Pages and Keynote. Otherwise, extensive documenation on Dashboard widget development can be found at Apple’s Developing Dashboard Widget page.