I use the Dashboard note widget throughout the day to jot down notes from phone calls (trying to get rid of all those minuscule scraps of paper around my desk). It works great in Dashboard - I just keep adding to the note and save it at the end of the day.
I would love to have similar functionality on my desktop, as going into Dashboard kind of breaks my flow. It could be either a special kind of note, of just a Take Note that I keep open all the time. I know I could just open up the Take Note in TextEdit, but I wasn’t sure if there was a better “sticky-type” solution that people are doing.
How would the sorter function as a desktop sticky? I want to keep the one note up all day and keep adding to it, not create separate notes and file them. I guess I don’t understand enough about the Sorter to see how that would work.
The Sorter isn’t a desktop sticky but a floating panel and therefore always accessible too. And it’s possible to create a note via the Sorter, see button at the bottom of the panel or the “Take Note…” command of the action menu.
Just to add to Christian’s idea, when you enter text into the note, you can then close the slide-out panel. Next time you slide the panel out, click on the pencil icon to get the editor panel, and the text you previously had is still there. The trick is not to “save” the note until you are done with it.
However, unlike a stickie, when the panel is open, other windows fall behind it. Also, if you do not intend on storing the note in DT at the end of the day, then why use DT?
An excellent point, but these are not throw-away notes, they are “random” notes, bits of information that may or may not make it into larger documents. I would rather have them organized by day, sort of like a daily notepad, and then I can use the search function in DT to find what I need again. This might not be a good use of DT, but I don’t know what else would do the job better.
Meanwhile, I was not even aware that the Take Note function in the Sorter worked that way! so I’m very happy to have this as an option. I think this will do the job - create the note at the beginning of the day, add as the day goes on, save it when the day is over. Perfect.
One more thing: In DTP you can go into preferences>sorter and assign a hot key to the take note function.
After that, wherever you are, you just press the hot key combination to bring up the continuing note. When you’re finished, press cmd+m to minimize it. At the end of the day, press cmd+s to save it.
Excellent suggestion on assigning a hot key to the Take Note feature. One thing that I will add is the Sorter does not need to be running for the hot key to bring up the Take Note window. However, if the Sorter is not running when taking a note, the Command-M tip to minimize the note will not work. You must save the note of you want to close the window.
I don’t know if you are happy with the ideas given to solve your question, but here is another one.
Some of my favorite (aka most used) widgets are made into regular apps that work on the desktop. To do this I use a little app called Amnesty Singles. It costs 10$ and works perfectly (I’m using it since 10.4 'til the current 10.6).
What a fantastic idea. I have a few widgets that I love but forget about because Dashboard just isn’t convenient for me. I may have to try this out. And it would certainly do exactly what I’m trying to do with the DT Jot.
