Developing a Vista SideBar Gadget

Matt in our team has done a terrific job with this post on developing a sidebar gadget.

And remember sidebar gadgets are just HTML + JavaScript. SideBar Gadgets are not tricky .NET things, just plain old HTML mixed with some JavaScript.

I think inside every ISV application there is a SideBar Gadget waiting to break out - go on, prove me right!

P.S. I was skeptical about gadgets when Vista was in Beta - but here I am happily using them day in day out to make my life a little bit easier...

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2007
  Can someone explain why Gadgets use JavaScript, a non-Microsoft product, rather than a Microsoft language, like VBscript or .NET? Thanks ANSWER: Originally the intention was to also support WPF but this capability has been delayed. That left us with HTML and JavaScript (as an aside - Javascript became an industry standard and Microsoft has had its own implementation of this for around 10 years and have recommended it over VBScript for many browser scenarios for sometime - so nothing new here). HTML + script makes Gadget development very accessible to the likely initial developers of gadgets. There is a way of using WPF today - but wouldnt rush into that route for the moment. (I will post on this just to make sure you and a couple of others spot it). Thanks for popping over. Eric