Users of Apple’s mobile iOS devices have long understood the ability to create Web Clips, which then act as Apps on their Home Screen, but few Mac users are aware that you can also create Web Clips to use as Widgets in Dashboard on OS X. Web Clip Widgets are especially useful for news sections of your favorite sites, allowing you to check back on them simply by clicking on your Dashboard icon rather than having to open a browser and navigate to the actual web page.
In this tutorial we’ll show you how to create your own custom Web Clip Widget from Safari for use in your Dashboard.
1.) Open Safari and navigate to a favorite web site. In this example, we’ve gone to Eurogamer, a leading video gaming news portal:

2.) Click on the File menu in the Toolbar and select Open in Dashboard…:

3.) The web page will darken, and a header will come up asking you to “Select part of the webpage, and then click Add”. Moving your mouse around the Safari window will display a highlighting box. Click on the area from which you wish to create a Web Clip. In the following screenshot, we’ve chosen the latest news section, as we know this is regularly updated:

4.) A selection box will appear, with handles on its edges to allow you to refine your selection. Move the handles till the selection box encompasses the desired area:

5.) Click on Add in the top-right of the window to create your Web Clip Widget. Dashboard will launch, and the new Widget will display a Loading Clip message as it pulls in information from the Internet. Once loaded, you now have a Widget displaying the latest information from that site:

6.) To further customize your new Web Clip, click on the small i button in the bottom-right corner of the Widget. From here, you can select different Themes for your new Web Clip, determine whether audio content should be played back, or Edit the selected area of the Web Clip without having to create a new Widget:

Web Clip Widgets are one of the most useful yet under-used aspects of the OS X Dashboard. They’re great for creating your own selection of custom news fields from your most-visited sites, which are then accessible with one click on the Dashboard icon in the Dock.