How to get started with Windows 7 gadgets

Question

I have never programmed a gadget for Vista or Seven  but I would like to try to make one  But where do I start  I have tried to search around on google and msdn  but I haven t managed to find anything useful  Either very  very old stuff  Vista beta stuff   already made gadgets or differences between gadgets in Vista and Seven  But that doesn t help me  since I don t have a clue how to make a gadget in the first place    I haven t even managed to find out what they are written in     So  could anyone help me out with a kick start    Where do I start  What do I need to know  What are they written in  How are they  packaged     In other words  how do I get from a clean install of Windows 7 with Visual Studio to a working Gadget that I can install and put on my Windows 7 desktop

User · Answer

I have started writing one tutorial for everyone on this topic  see making gadgets for Windows 7

User · Answer

Combining and organizing all the current answers into one answer  then adding my own research   Brief summary of Microsoft gadget development   What are they written in  Windows Vista Seven gadgets are developed in a mix of XML  HTML  CSS  and some IE scripting language  It is also possible to use C  with the latest release of Script    How are they packaged deployed  The actual gadgets are stored in   gadget files  which are simply the text source files listed above compressed into a single zip file   Useful references for gadget development   where do I start  Good introductory references to Windows Vista Seven gadget development    Developing Gadgets for the Windows Sidebar Vista Gadgets Introductory tutorial from I-Programmer Authoring Sidebar Gadgets in C  Developing a Gadget for Windows Sidebar Part 1  The Basics Official MSDN tutorial    If you are willing to use offline resources  this book appears to be an excellent resource    Creating Vista Gadgets  Using HTML  CSS and JavaScript with Examples in RSS  Ajax  ActiveX  COM  and Silverlight blog related to book  http   www innovatewithgadgets com    What do I need to know  Some other useful references  not necessarily instructional   Windows Sidebar  Official MSDN documentation  related Stack Overflow question  C  tutorial to write gadgets     Update  Well  this has proven to be a popular answer  Sharing my own recent experience with Windows 7 gadget development   Perhaps the easiest way to get started with Windows 7 gadget development is to modify a gadget that has already been developed  I recently did this myself because I wanted a larger clock gadget  Unable to find any  I tinkered with a copy of the standard Windows clock gadget until it was twice as large  I recommend starting with the clock gadget because it is fairly small and well-written  Here is the process I used    Locate the gadget you wish to modify  They are located in several different places  Search for folders named   gadget  Example  C  Program Files Windows Sidebar Gadgets Clock Gadget  Make a copy of this folder  installed gadgets are not wrapped in zip files   Rename some key parts    The folder name The name inside the gadget xml file  It looks like  lt name gt Clock lt  name gt  This is the name that will be displayed in the  Gadgets Gallery  window   Zip up the entire   gadget directory  Change the file extension from  zip  to  gadget   Probably just need to remove the   zip  extension   Install your new copy of the gadget by double clicking the new   gadget file  You can now add your gadget like any other gadget  right click desktop- Gadgets  Locate where this gadget is installed  probably to  LOCALAPPDATA  Microsoft Windows Sidebar   Modify the files in this directory  The gadget is very similar to a web page  HTML  CSS  JS  and image files  The gadget xml file specifies which file is opened as the  index  page for the gadget  After you save the changes  view the results by installing a new instance of the gadget  You can also debug the JavaScript  The rest of that article is pretty informative  too

User · Answer

Here s an MSDN article on Vista Gadgets   Some preliminary documentation on 7 gadgets  and changes   I think the only major changes are that Gadgets don t reside in the Sidebar anymore  and as such  dock undock events  are now backwards-compatibility cludges that really shouldn t be used   Best way to get started is probably to just tweak an existing gadget   There s an example gadget in the above link  or you could pick a different one out on your own   Gadgets are written in HTML  CSS  and some IE scripting language  generally Javascript  but I believe VBScript also works    For really fancy things you might need to create an ActiveX object  so C  C   for COM could be useful to know   Gadgets are packaged as   gadget  files  which are just renamed Zip archives that contain a gadget manifest  gadget xml  in their top level

User · Answer

Here s an excellent article by Scott Allen  Developing Gadgets for the Windows Sidebar   This site  Windows 7 Vista Sidebar Gadgets  has links to many gadget resources

[windows-7] How to get started with Windows 7 gadgets

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