14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like one thing we will be definitely seeing in Leopard is multiple Dashboards. No less than five Apple patents were published recently by the US Patent & Trademark Office, of which, the one entitled 'Multiple Dashboards' gives us a pretty clear idea on what we can expect to see.
The patent covers the user's ability to create multiple Dashboards, organized by whatever criteria makes sense to the user, and being able to contain one or more copies of the same widget. Different events will be able to trigger different Dashboards, and users will be able to switch between them at will. The patent mentions that a user will be able to specify whether a Dashboard they create will be available to other users of that computer as well. Furthermore, users will be able to specify if they wish to allow other users to make changes to their Dashboards.
The patent shows several methods of dealing with a multiple Dashboard environment. The simplest one is "tabs" that allows the quick change between one Dashboard environment and another one. The only aspect of tabs that is slightly different is the fact that their properties (size, color, font and location) could be handled by either the user or the operating system, in order to be more indicative of the dashboard contents.
Another method of working with multiple Dashboard environments detailed in the patent is a three-dimensional cube, each face showing one dashboard environment. Users would be able to manipulate the cube, turning it around in order to see the various environments, one advantage being that you could see more than just one such Dashboard environment at the same time. Besides cubes, the patent mentions that other geometrical shapes could also be used, such as cylinders, spheres, triangles and diamonds.
Considering that Apple is starting to blur the line between application and Dashboard, with all these other improvements, widgets could become even bigger than they were in Leopard.