Use DHTML To Create Your Own Sidebar Gadgets

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Looks like all that time I spent in the late 1990’s writing JavaScript is going to pay off, after all. Not only do we have AJAX to thank for resurrecting our JavaScript skillz, but now the Windows Sidebar Gadget architecture uses DHTML as well.

The steps to create a gadget are really simple.

  1. Create a folder with a suffix of “.gadget”
  2. Put an HTML file in the folder
  3. Put an XML file in the folder
  4. Add your new gadget to the Sidebar.

You can see a complete walk-through of creating a Windows Sidebar Gadget online.

Looks like it is time to break out the O’Reilly JavaScript book again.