The Mysterious Safari Dashboard Button

Appleinsider reports that developers have found an unused button in Safari in the pre-release builds of 10.4.3. This button is not actually active, however, in the version of Safari included with 10.4.3, it’s simply buried in the resources folder inside the application.

Something is strange about this button and I question whether AppleInsider’s assumption that the button detects a downloadable widget on the page is correct. It just doesn’t seem like enough to justify a whole button.

Of all the pages you browse on a daily basis how many include links to Dashboard widgets? Would those few instances really justify it’s own button? I suppose if the button activated when you went to a web app like Odeo or Backpack that had free widgets that complimented the service it could be useful to alert users. But once you had downloaded it, what’s the point of the button still being there, just deactivated?

Also, I mean, it’s not that hard to download widgets. That said, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple simply wanted to prominently feature Dashboard and be in-your-face about it in light of new competition from Yahoo’s Konfabulator.

The second problem is one of aesthetics. It just doesn’t fit. It’s black with a bit of red, it doesn’t match any of the other monochrome Safari buttons. In fact, when included in a current version of Safari as seen in this mockup, it’s an outright eye sore.

Granted, Apple is capable of any one of these offenses of aesthetics and logic. My guess is that there’s something more. A missing piece that will make this button make sense. Or maybe not. We’ll find out.

NOTE: The mockups in this post were done by me for demonstration and are not actually screenshots of any Safari builds.