widgets

have recently purchased macbook pro (mountain lion), had to deal with obstacles that rookies encounter initially (but somehow successfully
one issue i couldn't solve is the constantly overlapping widgets that appear forefront on every page, even cant watch a movie without having them present there
i dont wanna delete or disable them as they are useful but all i need to know is how i can let them "fall behind", so that i can view the pages and watch films while they remain in the background
urghhhh

What are you using to view movies, what widgets are you seeing, how did you get them, what have you tried and what happened when you tried it? We need some more info to be able to assist.

MacInWin said:

What are you using to view movies, what widgets are you seeing, how did you get them, what have you tried and what happened when you tried it? We need some more info to be able to assist.

Click to expand...

i am using divx to view the movies since quick-player doesn't enable me to drag and drop srt files
have installed weather, time and date widgets thru dashboard by firstly un-selecting "show dashboard as a space" via system preferences > mission control
thats it, so now i cant seem to scroll down the page as the widgets clog my way and i gotta push them away from the screen to normally see the page on my 13 inch macbook pro

any idea how i can iron out the issue?

I would re-select "Show dashboard as a space" and then move the widgets to that space. They should park there and stay out of the way. When you want to see a widget, you can swipe 4 fingers L-R to get that space displayed and then back again to get rid of it. Or if you are using a mouse, click on the scroll ball to get the dashboard to display.

MacInWin said:

I would re-select "Show dashboard as a space" and then move the widgets to that space. They should park there and stay out of the way. When you want to see a widget, you can swipe 4 fingers L-R to get that space displayed and then back again to get rid of it. Or if you are using a mouse, click on the scroll ball to get the dashboard to display.

Click to expand...

i re-selected and can use 4 fingers on the trackpad (no mouse) to swipe to the dashboard but i cant drag the widgets there
why is everything so complicated when it could have been made much simpler, i dont get it

It got complicated because you decided to muck about with the widgets when you didn't understand what you were doing, to be blunt. By default, widgets go on their own page so 99.9 percent of us simply don't have the problem you created for yourself.

To help you get out of it, you need to help us help you by describing very clearly what's going on, what you've done to get there and what you've tried to get out of it. A screenshot or two wouldn't hurt either.

You might try holding down the option key and pressing the "X" to close the widgets that are still on your desktop, then go to the widget page and re-open them using the little "plus in a circle" icon on the left side of the dashboard page.

so i guess this 99 % of people have a distorted perception of how apple technology should be like
it is far from being handy and comfortable
all i asked was having widgets on the desktop but i got told that i cant have them and the only way i can have them is swiping my four fingers and seeing them thru the dashboard, but i wanted them on the desktop, but in the background (not overlapping sites and divx), simply it is impossible this way, so go figure out who or what is complicated
but thanks for your help anyways

If you want someone to help you , youll need to explain how you got the widgets on the desktop to begin with . Have you tried to just simply drag the widgets to the trash. Apple technology is and always has been far more useful than Microsoft.
Don't get me wrong I use both systems as well as some Linux .
Microsoft took the world of computing to a market of end users who had no Idea how the system works or do they care as long as they can point and click .
Apple never intended to create a system for users who want a simple system to just point and click .

To put it simply the transition from using windows to OSX or Linux is like driving a car all your life then suddenly you want to fly a 747. Its complicated at first and it takes time to learn .

@mikaju, what they are trying to say is that OSX does not work like Windows, and some newcomers to OSX do things to try to force it to do so because they are comfortable with that. OSX is neither harder nor easier than Windows, just different. When a new user tries to force OSX to look and feel like Windows, it just doesn't work well. I think dawson1112 over stated the case, it's more like shifting from a car with manual transmission to one with automatic transmission. Yes, you CAN still shift gears, but it's not the designed way for the car to operate, it won't be as efficient as it could be and it will never be the same feel as the manual shifting. In the case of OSX, widgets are designed to always be on top, which is why the dashboard exists in the first place. It may feel strange now, but trust us, in a little while that four finger swipe to see the widgets becomes your new "how things are supposed to work."

EDIT: Changed procedure for ML. Try this, it's a real gyration, but allegedly it will move widgets to the dashboard.

Click and hold on the widget.
Hold shift at the same time.
Press Fn+F12 to show the dashboard
Release Shift and Click.
Press Fn+F12 to deactivate Dashboard, and your widget should no longer appear on your desktop.

if that doesn't work, you can uninstall the widgets and reinstall them on the dashboard. That may actually work better.

@mikaju, You know, I wrote that last post and took that suggested set of steps from another article I found on the web. But I just tried an experiment and I'm totally confused now by the problem that you are having. When I deselected "Show dashboard as a space" my current desktop did NOT have any widgets showing. Then Fn+F12 got all of them to float above the desktop, and Fn+F12 made them all go away. Reselecting "Show dashboard as a space" restored them all to the dashboard.

So by installing the widget on the desktop instead of the dashboard, you may be forced to uninstall them to get them reinstalled where they belong. Drag and drop may not work. The widgets still won't be full time present on the desktop, that's not how they work in OSX. To install them to the dashboard, use the "+" key on the dashboard to install them.

installing them via dashboard by simply clicking + is not an issue, never had a trouble with that
still i find it hard recalling how i imported widgets on the desktop to begin with, was it by clicking on the widget (from dashboard) and then pressing f3? cant really recall
after reselecting "Show dashboard as a space" and restarting macbook made all the widgets disappear from desktop and now i can view them on dashboard by swiping 4 fingers
but in order to achieve full proficiency in handling mac in general i guess i should turn myself into an octopus
thanks for your efforts MacinWin

Not an octopus, but if you use keyboard shortcuts, a concert pianist is the image. I use a mouse most of the time because unless I am on the road, a mouse is so much more logical. I can, and do, use the trackpad when mobile, but it's not my first option.

Hang in there, it'll become more natural to you as you learn. As I said, OSX isn't really hard, it's just different.

Glad you got the widgets where they belong!

MacInWin said:

Not an octopus, but if you use keyboard shortcuts, a concert pianist is the image. I use a mouse most of the time because unless I am on the road, a mouse is so much more logical. I can, and do, use the trackpad when mobile, but it's not my first option.

Hang in there, it'll become more natural to you as you learn. As I said, OSX isn't really hard, it's just different.

Glad you got the widgets where they belong!

Click to expand...

oh yeah now that i ve solved this issue
another one popped up

guess i should open a new thread about it, it has something to do with `effective` search
once i type the names of media (films, music folders etc) in finder > hard drive, it doesnt detect them

To find files whose location you don't know, use Spotlight (The magnifying glass icon on the top right of the menu bar). Enter the name of the file and it will return the location and allow you to open the file from there.
To see the path to the file, move the cursor to the file, wait a few seconds and a box with more information about the file will open. Now hold down the Command key and at the bottom of the box will show more detail about the file, and eventually the path to the file.

You can also use smart folders to gather into it all media files, look here.

MacInWin said:

To find files whose location you don't know, use Spotlight (The magnifying glass icon on the top right of the menu bar). Enter the name of the file and it will return the location and allow you to open the file from there.
To see the path to the file, move the cursor to the file, wait a few seconds and a box with more information about the file will open. Now hold down the Command key and at the bottom of the box will show more detail about the file, and eventually the path to the file.

You can also use smart folders to gather into it all media files, look here.

Click to expand...

massive thanks
it was very descriptive and totally comprehensible