Windows Vista; Go go gadget

With the new Windows Vista being released, I simply couldn’t suppress the urge to write a simple Windows Sidebar Gadget. And since I listen to the radio every day, and manually copy the stations URL stream to Windows Media Player, it didn’t take too long before I decided to write a gadget that allows the user to select stations from a limited list and play them on the background.

A gadget is developed using HTML and script. They have access to extra information about themself and Windows when the HTML is run as a gadget. This allows a gadget to interact with Windows files and folders, such as showing images from the users’ pictures folder or displaying information about a wireless connection. Displaying settings dialogs and storing those settings is also possible by using script. Very complex and rich gadgets are possibly using only script without using other binary objects.

To create a simple gadget, you only need two files; so it’s quite easy to create one.

  1. Gadget Manifest  - An XML file defining the gadget properties, including name, icon and description
  2. HTML file - Defines the core code for the gadget

If you want to start developing your own Windows Sidebar Gadget, I suggest reading some of the following pages.

  1. Gadget Development Overview
  2. Vista: Sample Sidebar Gadget
  3. How to create a Vista Sidebar Gadget
  4. Sidebar Gadgets VS Live.com Gadgets

Download the code for my NL radio gadget here, install notes are included with the zipfile.

WordPress database error: [Table 'feg_wordpress.wp_comments' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '7' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date

Leave a Reply