anyone!?

:(

This is just a random thought but did you have any special characters in the name of any of your fields? eg:"Wholesale & Supply", the "&" character being a special character.

I know that its possible to use "<p></p>" and other HTML code snippets in your descriptions and titles to make descriptions span over multiple lines (i figured this out by experimenting). This leads me to believe that any text input as descriptions or values in the forms section is sytax sensitive, and any special characters could possibly cause irreversable effects because when the values are returned(even in the forms section) HTML is still reading these special characters and causing erratic output.

I don't know if this is the problem but it might be a clue.

hanks to everyone for your interesting suggestions. Currently I've settled on just having the introductory widget on the dashboard only and explaining both sections from there, I've left it like that for the time being but I will get back on it again when I'm done fixing other stuff. Thanks Dhrup and v!N!th@ for your code. It may be just what I need. Will let you know if I get it working.

I've been thinking about shillo's argument and it does make sense, the intro widget would seem out of place when other users are viewing your profile, however, this drives me more to find a solution to the dashboard/profile widgets issue. As shillo pointed out some widgets can be quite pointless on the profile but as I mentioned before, these widgets could be made useful by automatically changing the functions available to the user viewing the page. I implore widget makers to create dynamic widgets that can change their functionality depending on which area they are presented in. 

For example: a map widget on the dashboard could be used to mark personal points of interest but if you were to place the same widget on the profile page it could be used for other users to recommend points of interest that would apply to you. This way we could maximize the usefulness of this widget and also prevent having multiple widgets where the same amount of functionality could be crammed into one single widget. It would also encourage users to explore applications knowing that each application has a much broader range of use.

For those who are not interested in creating this dynamic appeal to their widgets it would be recommended as shillo points out to have some control over which widgets are available for users to add to their profile and dashboard.

On the topic of widget control, It would be nice if a user could search and select widgets or applications using a listing page and categories and then being able to add the widgets that interest them to a pool of widgets which would then show up in the widget selector instead of having all the widgets piled up in there. I plan on having quite a lot of applications available to my users so I'm afraid that my widget selector is going to become quite crowded. I don't know if there is a plug-in for this, if there is then what’s it called? 

As a final note, the Intro widget could also second as an update informant wherein users who wish to keep the widget could receive information on updates to the system and new features available to them.

@ ImABOK
Try the Welcome page (right/left inclusions). You can easily put your instructions there as to how to use profile/dashboard widgets. The only thing is users must reach the main page when logged-in, which you can fix by using the plugin login_redirector.

please see:
http://community.elgg.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=322112&group_guid=321198