Dashboard

Dashboard was an applications layer for Mac OS X (starting with 10.4 "Tiger") that allowed users to perform small tasks in mini-apps called "widgets". It is based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which has been compared to Konfabulator and classic desk accessories.

Activated by clicking the icon in the Dock, a semi-transparent layer appears over the desktop, upon which the widgets appear. Dashboard became a platform for fastcoded mini-applications like calculators, weather-feeds, news-feeds, and graphical clocks, which became predecessors to early iOS apps for the iPhone.

Widgets
Widgets are small web pages housed in a .wdgt package that can be created with Apple's Dashcode widget creation software (included with Apple's Xcode). The stock widgets were:
 * Address Book
 * Business
 * Calculator
 * Calendar
 * Dictionary
 * ESPN
 * Flight Tracker
 * Google Search
 * iTunes Controller
 * Movies
 * People Finer
 * Phone Book
 * Ski Report
 * Stickies
 * Stocks
 * Tile Game
 * Translation
 * Unit Converter
 * Weather
 * Web Clips
 * World Clock

Discontinuation
Dashboard was gradually phased out of macOS as 10.14 "Mojave" had it turned off by default. It could be turned back on in the Mission Control pane in System Preferences. However, it was removed completely with the release of macOS 10.15 "Catalina" in October 2019.