For Dummies Dashcode 978-0-470-88473-7 User Manual

In This Chapter

▶ 

Discovering Dashcode terminology

▶ 

Getting to know apps and widgets

▶ 

Working with Safari Web apps

▶ 

Using iPhone Web apps

F

rom the very beginning, the Mac has demonstrated that it doesn’t have 
to hurt to use a computer. You don’t have to type some obscure com-

mand; instead, you can move a mouse to click an icon. You don’t have to 
create a program with thousands of lines of obscure computer code in order 
to generate a program. The folks at Apple have raised the bar higher and 
higher so that building programs and using them is easier and easier.

And from the beginning, some people have snorted at this concept of making 
computers easy to use. Talk to old-timers or read some newspaper and maga-
zine articles from the 1980s, and you’ll understand how suspicious people 
were of the mouse . . . not to mention all those pictures on the screen.

Apple and the Mac started to change all those viewpoints. Dashcode is just 
the latest example of Apple’s approach to computers “for the rest of us.” 
Dashcode makes it easy to build software that’s easy to use and that does 
amazing things.

This chapter shows you what you can do with Dashcode and how to do it.

Developing Software for Apple Computers

Apple builds hardware — products such as the Mac itself, iPod, iPhone, and 
iPad. It also builds software to make those devices work — operating systems 
such as Mac OS X and iOS. (Formerly called iPhone OS, iOS is the operating 

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