Developing Gadgets for the Windows Sidebar

Monday, January 8th, 2007

Windows Vista introduced the Sidebar – an anchored panel on the Windows desktop that can host mini-applications known as gadgets. Windows Vista 005.jpg These gadgets are fun to develop and can deliver real value to a user’s desktop. Windows Vista ships with gadgets that can track stock prices, display news feeds, and deliver weather forecasts. The gadgets users will find most appealing, however, are those gadgets that deliver the specialized information they need to complete their everyday tasks. These gadgets might not come with the broad appeal of a weather gadget, but will be gadgets that talk to corporate web services and backend systems to retrieve business information inside the corporate firewall.

In this article, we’ll take a look at developing gadgets for Windows Vista using DHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. We’ll introduce the object model, and security aspects of gadget development. By the end of the article we’ll have built a real gadget. You can download the code / gadget from OdeToCode. Note: in order for the gadget to work, you’ll need to sign up and obtain an API key from Flickr. Enter this apiKey on line three of ShowMeLife.js.