I know many people think it's a waste of space, and Windows 7 does away with it altogether and just lets the gadgets float on your desktop wherever you want them something you can already do with individual gadgets in Vista by detaching them from the sidebar.
But whether they're lined up neatly down the side of my desktop in a bar or scattered around, I think gadgets are cool and useful. Many folks don't like a "busy" desktop, but it works nicely for me. I like having everything I need at my fingertips -- as long as it's all neatly arranged. Note that this is a inch monitor, and I have a three-monitor array inch monitors on either side , so I have plenty of screen real estate to work with.
Ed Bott recently shared his favorite gadgets with us in his blog, but while I agree with Ed that most not all of the gadgets Microsoft included in Vista are not very exciting, my favorites except for one are different from his.
Of course, your favorites may not be the same as mine or Ed's, depending on how you use your computer and what information you like to have at your fingertips.
But in this article, I'll show you the ones I find myself using most. Note: This information is also available as a PDF download and as a photo gallery. For a long time, I used the calendar application included with Vista which you can see in Figure A, third from the top. The calendar is probably the gadget I use most often because I work with many deadlines and I like having the whole month right there in front of me so I can quickly see, for instance, what day of the week the 19th is when someone asks me whether I can meet that day.
You can set two cities and switch between them with a click on the lower-right icon. Enjoy exploring the border between a toy and a time-saver. Take pleasure from trying a new applet, I say again, one or two will turn out to be indispensable. If you want a focussed search then browse through the categories before you start downloading and installing.
As usual, Microsoft provide 3 ways of doing everything; while this overkill often induces ridicule, it does infuse newbies with confidence that wherever they click, double click, or right hand click, they will soon install the Windows Vista Gadget and get it configured to their preference.
Gadgets really are taking off. Every company seems to be getting in on the act and creating a gadget for the Vista desktop. This utility will also guide you through troubleshooting; the dashboard will indicate whether the root cause is a broken link, faulty equipment or resource overload. What I like best is the way NPM suggests solutions to network problems.
Its also has the ability to monitor the health of individual VMware virtual machines. If you are interested in troubleshooting, and creating network maps, then I recommend that you try NPM now. One of the advantages of working for myself is that I can be honest. Vista Gadgets will always be toys, some of which have a business justification. Part of the appeal of Gadgets is that they are connected to sources which are constantly updated, e. If no Gadgets appear, and the sidebar is just a solid black, try re-registering msxml3.
The Solution: Is to register a dll. The trap is you have to Run as administrator. Click Start, type cmd, right-click, and then click Run as administrator. In the Command Prompt window, type: regsvr32 msxml3. Not all technologies are successful. However, I am now a believer these Vista Gadgets are here to stay.
There is something for everyone, from better ways of delivering news, to out-and-out games. Note that with the English local. Are you sure?
Developers often want to pop up informational messages like these. Sidebar, however, has disabled these JavaScript functions. If you still feel compelled to use popups, you can emulate these functions. Then create a file that contains the code shown in Figure 7 and name it alert. Now you can continue to use alert and confirm as you wish. Debugging JavaScript has always been tricky.
Many developers have resorted to placing alerts in their code to display the values of certain variables. This, however, is not an elegant solution. Simply place debugger statements in your code, wherever you need to check the value of a variable, then run the gadget.
When JavaScript executes the debugger statement, you should see a popup that asks if you want to debug the application see Figure 8. Choosing Yes will allow you to browse the entire gadget environment, including the DOM, and view the value of any variable created. Your gadget is essentially frozen in time. Figure 9 shows a section of debugged code where the value of the variable refreshRate is This form of debugging is very powerful.
Note that JavaScript debugging is vastly improved in the next version of Visual Studio code-named "Orcas. The simplest way to create a package is with Windows Explorer. Select the files that make up your gadget, right-click, and select Send To Compressed zipped Folder.
You can also package your gadget as a CAB file, which is the Microsoft native compressed archive format. Just generate the CAB file and then rename it with a.
By the way, if you ever try renaming a. There are a few different methods you can use if you want to programmatically generate a gadget. In my projects, I create the following batch file called make. This uses the Cabarc. From within Visual Studio , I run make. The batch file creates a folder under the user gadgets folder which is where gadgets are created when installed and copies all of the gadget files into the new folder. My batch file also generates a. When you use this method, there is no need to double-click on the.
If you do this, just be sure to place the names of the files you want to exclude in the exclude. I wanted my sample gadget to use all of the major features of a Sidebar gadget flyouts, docked versus floating states, options, localization, and so on. But I also wanted the sample gadget to be simple. And it had to be somewhat useful.
I settled on the idea for an RSS reader that displays news headlines. As this sample is for an MSDN Magazine article, it seemed like an obvious choice to use the RSS feed for all articles in the current issue of the magazine this is available at msdn. Imagine how dynamic and informative you could make this gadget if you were to use a feed of news or sports headlines, or even multiple feeds federated into one data source.
Windows Vista Sidebar already ships with a feed headlines gadget. What makes my sample unique is the way the information is presented. The headlines are displayed in a news ticker fashion, like you see at the bottom of your TV screen on news channels. This is great for on a smaller screen or a cluttered Sidebar where real estate is at a premium. The gadget follows all of the recommendations given in this article: it uses a flyout to display detailed information when you click on a headline, it lets you select from three different feed reload times in the Options dialog, it changes size when moved to a floating state, and it supports several languages through the use of localization folders.
The Additional Resources sidebar has more information. He is very active in the gadget development community, both with Windows Vista Sidebar and Web gadgets. When running the self-extracting. Browse to, or type, your desired location and select OK. Open the GadgetSamples. Double-click a.
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