Apple provided build 8C40 of 10.4.2 on Friday and included was a slick-looking widget manager that quickly enables users to, enable, disable and delete widgets.

The new widget manager is accessible via a Manage Widgets option directly above the widgets dock, the widget manager is launched within Dashboard.

The look of the widget manager is similar to that of a standard widget but cannot be flipped unlike most other widgets, its in the style of the iChat buddy list and contains a list of user installed widgets. Down the left of the list are checkboxes to enable or disable the widgets and along the right are red stop signs to allow the user to delete the widgets. Upon deletion the user is asked for confirmation.

The newest build of 10.4.2 also includes changes to the way users install widgets, after downloading a widget Safari asks whether or not a user wishes to install the widget, this is an obvious security precaution. On clicking install the widget is displayed in a sandbox like environment and the user is presented with two options, ‘Keep’ and ‘Delete’, the sandbox allows users to try out the widget before adding it to the widget dock.

Some sources have noted that Dashboard animations are now much smoother, but we are unable to confirm whether this is down to Q2DE being enabled.

Update 1 Reports have begun to come in that Quartz 2D Extreme remains to be disabled in builds of Mac OS 10.4.2