Not everything you do on your Mac requires a heavy-duty application. For those smaller tasks, Mac OS X features Dashboard, a semi-transparent layer that floats above your desktop at the press of a key, and provides access to several fun and functional, mini applications called widgets. Dashboard even includes widgets for some of your Mac applications, including Address Book and iTunes, which allow you to access your contacts and music, respectively, without having to switch over to the full application. But it doesn't end there, you can add more widgets to Dashboard and, if you're feeling really ambitious, you can even create your own widgets.By default, Dashboard starts up when you first turn on your Mac, but you won't actually see it until you open it by either clicking its icon in the Dock, pressing the F12 key or the Dashboard key (F4 on the aluminum keyboards). To hide Dashboard, click on any Dashboard area that doesn't contain a widget or press the F12 key again. Here's a quick start guide to Dashboard and the included widgets.