All gadgets (How do I... Add and customize sidebar gadgets in Microsoft Windows Vista?)

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good overview but...

I wanted to point out a couple features the reveiwer seems to have missed, or chose not to highlight:

- You don't have to drill all the way down to the control panel applet to access the properties for the SideBar. You can instead just right-click either the SideBar itself, or its system tray icon.

- You can right-click the SideBar and then click "Add Gadgets" in the context menu to access the gallery as the reviewer described, or, to do it with one click, just click the little plus "+" symbol at the top of the SideBar.

- SideBar gadgets don't have to live on the SideBar. They can be dragged off the SideBar and onto the desktop, where a daget's individual properties can be set to "Always on Top" if desired (if, for example, you want to keep the clock always visible). If you have a number of gadgets floating on your desktop and you don't want them always on top, but you still want them quickly accessible without having to minimize all your open windows to see the gadgets, hitting Windows key + spacebar will instantly bring all your gadgets to the front.

Finally, a gripe: while the really cool gadgets have always come from the developer community (as is the case with Yahoo Widgets, Google gadgets, and Apple's Dashboard widgets), the opening lines in the review:

"Microsoft added sidebar gadgets to the Windows Vista interface with the intention it would enhance the overall user experience. However, the gadgets that actually ship with Vista do not exactly fill that promise."

smacks of the usual FUD designed to make the author's review of the gallery more interesting. The default gadgets on the SideBar are a clock, an RSS feed reader, a slideshow viewer, as well as others including a system performance monitor (memory, CPU, etc.) and a post-it-style note taker. How are these not useful? Whoever the person was at Microsoft who decided which gadgets to include obviously did their homework, since these types of widgets are consistently the most popular on other widget platforms, and the ones that Microsoft included work great. If you replaced the included RSS gadget, for example, with one from the developer community, it would be for one with more than the basic functionality expected of all RSS readers, which Microsoft's gadget provides, or perhaps with a different appearance, both of which are entirely based on personal preference and not to poor design on the part of the included widgets, which do, in fact, enhance the overall user experience.

Otherwise, a good introduction to the SideBar.

Posted by: tooner440   Posted on: 09/21/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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