Sidebar Gadget Templates

  • Article

One of the UX technologies I mentioned during my talk for the MSDN Roadshow today was the Sidebar (and in Windows 7, Desktop) gadgets, which are great for surfacing small amounts of information in a a compact space.

One of the attendees asked whether Visual Studio has templates for Sidebar Gadgets, and the answer is no, but you can download VB or C# templates for Sidebar Gadgets from my colleague Tim Heuer’s blog:

https://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/03/11/14010.aspx

I have not tested the gadget template on Windows 7, so it’s possible that they might need tweaking for the desktop. Certainly, you’ll probably want to take a look at the overall experience of desktop gadgets vs. sidebar, since there’s more flexibility in size and shape for desktop gadgets.

Enjoy!