Old-Fashioned Dashboard

While having the Dashboard as a whole “space” in Lion is useful for those that use Dashboard a lot, you can also return to using these widgets over overlays to your desktop like they were previously. Go to Mission Control in System Preferences and turn off “Show Dashboard as a Space.” Now you can still use your shortcut key or the Dashboard Dock icon to access those widgets, but they will just appear on top of your existing screen items.