Dashcode was a software application created by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

that was included with

Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...

and facilitates the development of widgets for

Dashboard For business applications, see Dashboard (business). A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel (IP), or fascia) is a control panel set within the central console of a vehicle or small aircraft. Usually located directly ahead of the driver ...

. It was first included on new MacBooks shipping around the time of May 24, 2006, as part of the

Xcode Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was initially released in late 2003; the latest stable release is version 14.2, released on December 13, ...

developer tools. Dashcode, Version 3.0 (328), was included as part of Apple's

developer tools on the

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. ...

DVD as an optional install. The last iteration of Dashcode, Version 3.0.5 for Xcode 4, is still available to developer account holders as an optional install fro
Downloads for Apple Developers (Apple Developer ID required)

History

WWDC

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

mentioned Dashcode as a new feature to be included in Leopard during his 2006

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...

keynote speech. Although not installed by default as part of an Xcode installation, the DVDs handed out at the

did contain a version of Dashcode. Although the version number was in fact lower than that of the "MacBook build", the WWDC build of Dashcode contained several additional templates, as well as some interface and functionality improvements. This WWDC build launched on both

Mac OS X v10.4 Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Som ...

and the WWDC build of Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"), but was unusable on 10.4 (crashes soon after startup).

Public beta

On December 20, 2006, Apple released a

public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of Dashcode. When announcing this release, Apple stated the beta had been "scaled back" for compatibility with Mac OS X v10.4. This beta expired on July 15, 2007.

Dashcode and iOS

Dashcode Version 2.0 (151) is included as part of Apple's

iOS SDK The iOS SDK (iOS Software Development Kit), formerly the iPhone SDK, is a software development kit (SDK) developed by Apple Inc. The kit allows for the development of mobile apps on Apple's iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The iOS SDK is a fre ...

. This allows for the creation of

Web app A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

s for the

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

version of

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

. Dashcode Version 3.0.2 (336) is installed with Xcode on OS X Lion. It is not known if this will allow for the local installation of Dashcode-created web apps, as such an ability will allow iOS to run a software layer akin to Mac OS X's Dashboard, which runs on a local installation. Currently, iOS maintains a separation between native code and web code, in that way native applications can access data from the Internet, web content can't be accessed by native applications save for Safari; likewise, web content (including web apps) can be run inside the Safari browser, but cannot have access to the filesystem or other internals of iOS and cannot be installed on the operating system in the same way as native code. Native code software for iOS is currently developed using the

suite, particularly an iPhone-centric version of

Interface Builder Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple Inc., Apple's macOS operating system. It is part of Xcode (formerly Project Builder), the Apple Developer developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa (API), Cocoa and Car ...

packaged with the iOS SDK.

References

External links

Dashcode public beta download
from Apple

from Apple Developer Connection
Dashcode Developer TipsDashboard User Tips
{{macOS developer tools MacOS development