Recommended Posts

The sidebar is a joke, just to make ppl excitied bout vista when it first came out they couldnt think of anything new so they decided to add sidebar, first why do u need a clock on sidebar after years almost 20 years using windows i always look in the corner were the clock is why look on sidebar, half the stuff that came with sidebar is also useless as u want need it, firstly it also gets info from ametuer sites...tut tut. Man didnt see the sidebar like this since today but yeh i turned it of after a week or 2 no point to it

Sad but true. Faulty drivers/lack of drivers/drivers with limited features are always blamed on the OS.

Meh. He said the developers weren't getting off their butts. A little different to call developers lazy than saying that the OS had limitations.

The sidebar is a joke, just to make ppl excitied bout vista when it first came out they couldnt think of anything new so they decided to add sidebar, first why do u need a clock on sidebar after years almost 20 years using windows i always look in the corner were the clock is why look on sidebar, half the stuff that came with sidebar is also useless as u want need it, firstly it also gets info from ametuer sites...tut tut. Man didnt see the sidebar like this since today but yeh i turned it of after a week or 2 no point to it

I find them quite useful. Especially the weather, stock price, seattle traffic, sticky notes, and of course my indexer status gadget. I also have the RSS gadget set up to show me when new downloads of my favorite shows are available.

He seems to do that quite a lot. Write an article which basically says I'll be writing this later....

And yet this thread has already has a second page*, heh.

(where page = 25 posts)

Meh. He said the developers weren't getting off their butts. A little different to call developers lazy than saying that the OS had limitations.

That's not what I meant, I didn't even mention "OS limitations". LOL

All I'm trying to say is: when a piece of hardware(software too btw.) doesn't work, they always blame the wrong "x". (x can be anything from windows to microsoft to windows devs and linux to linux devs and even OSX/OSX devs if something doesn't work on their hacked OSx86 machine.) Instead of blaming the company that made the piece of hardware and doesn't release decent drivers for it or cross-platform drivers.

Last I heard, the Sidebar was turned in to part of Live, then just scrapped entirely. I don't know what happened to the team after that - the Shell team looks like a logical place for them to go, though I don't know what they're working on (if they've not just been integrated in to the various teams already in the shell team).

Apparently, someone pretty high up in the company had a lot of enthusiasm for the Sidebar, which is why they didn't scrap it pre-launch. A lot of people didn't even want it shipped in RTM.

I'm using OSX as my primary OS now, and I don't even use Dashboard that much. The dock icons are much more useful - for example, my torrent application (for catching up on those Linux builds, you know?) has download speed overlaid on its dock icon. Mail.App has unread message count overlaid on its icon. It's much more useful, and that seems to be the route Microsoft is taking as well - if recent taskbar screenshots are anything to go by. That said, it's a just a contextual service for applications - an entirely different philosophy from the Sidebar, which was meant to aggregate online services in to one place on the desktop.

From what I have been told and from what I have seen in the screen captures that have been floating around on Google, the Windows Sidebar has been integrated directly into the shell (Windows Explorer) and is no longer a separate entity, which in my opinion is a good move because now that it is part of the shell there should be more underlying APIs being developed for this next generation which can be exposed by gadget developers.

Right now, Windows Sidebar 1.0 (in Windows Vista) is flawed because of the lack of APIs (yes, you can hook in with .NET if you know what you are doing, but let's pretend you are an average Joe User and you want to make your own sidebar gadget). With more APIs exposed to potential developers and better tools (let's see some love for Gagdets in the next release of Visual Studio), I think that the ecosystem for Windows Sidebar gadgets would be richer, more robust, and most importantly more useful.

Blah blah blah...give them time jebus.

Give them time? What I described was exactly what Vista was supposed to be way back when, and I think they've had more than enough time to get it right by now. All the features they slashed from Vista were my reasons for wanting it in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I love Vista and am using it on the two computers I have that can run it, but the only reason I own them is because 1 copy came with my Laptop and the other I got when I built my first computer and it was actually cheaper to buy Vista than XP. I'm all the time defending Vista, but when it comes right down to it, there aren't enough new features to have made me want to upgrade had I already owned an XP license.

My point is that Microsoft needs to do something drastic with the next release of Windows, and the fact that they're just building off of Vista at the moment seems troubling to me (actually, the very soon-ish release is what makes that *really* troubling). I haven't seen plans for that 3D interface I mentioned since way back before XP was released, but I thought it was a novel idea, given current graphics card availability and capability. Operating systems need to evolve with the equipment they are running on, and while the business sector doesn't care for a resource intensive 3D interface, the consumer(and I specifically mentioned "consumer" for a reason in my original post) aka home user might want something... different, and better organized, and yes, full of eye candy. Might as well do something with those beefy machines we all own.

Given the flak Vista has received for being not different enough from XP, I thought people would be on board with me in saying they shouldn't repeat that mistake twice.

But I guess I would be okay with a Vista add-on if it actually *did* include all the features Vista was supposed to have in the first place. The dedicated gaming mode was probably my most wanted feature, although now that I own a computer capable enough for the time being, I don't see too much of a need. Still, it would be nice to have nothing bogging your computer down when you're gaming in those more graphic-intensive games.

The Sidebar will be removed; they don't even have a Sidebar team anymore. Not since launch.

I hope the functionality of sidebar will be in the redesigned taskbar (Y) Makes more sense to me.

I wonder how many people actually use the sidebar? I haven't. I turned it off the day I installed Vista. I just can't find a use for it.

I use sidebar but find it takes up too much screen space. Got an Gadget showing my internet usage, network traffic, cpu usage and a clock.

But it more like a gimmick than something really useful. Needs redesign.

Apparently, someone pretty high up in the company had a lot of enthusiasm for the Sidebar, which is why they didn't scrap it pre-launch. A lot of people didn't even want it shipped in RTM.

He has a name. Jim Allchin ;)

sidebar needs to be brought back to the level it was in the Longhorn beta (part of the shell and could be "merged" with the taskbar

and Aero being out is good news too, it looks cool for a bit but isn't very usable

Right. Just like how 'gadgets' work in Ubuntu ( my second fav OS :heart: ), this way the information they show is informative but not bloated in screen real-estate.

Hook it from .Net? I don't think so, you'll need native code for that.

My indexer status gadget uses a .NET control. While it could be problematic if you loaded another .NET gadget that used the .NET 1.x framework, and that one got loaded first, I haven't found this to be a likely scenario.

On the brighter side, it makes it easy to have automatic support for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions with one binary.

Right now, Windows Sidebar 1.0 (in Windows Vista) is flawed because of the lack of APIs (yes, you can hook in with .NET if you know what you are doing, but let's pretend you are an average Joe User and you want to make your own sidebar gadget). With more APIs exposed to potential developers and better tools (let's see some love for Gagdets in the next release of Visual Studio), I think that the ecosystem for Windows Sidebar gadgets would be richer, more robust, and most importantly more useful.

Eh, you can do quite a lot from just JScript / VBScript. Quite a lot of system APIs (and application APIs) are useable from script via COM / IDispatch / ActiveX.

I wonder how many people actually use the sidebar? I haven't. I turned it off the day I installed Vista. I just can't find a use for it.

I also keep it off. In fact the only time I'd think of using the sidebar is using Brandon Live's search gadget to force the indexer to index at highest priority. The sidebar performs sluggishly and takes ages to start up on a fresh Vista install.

If they do bring back Sidebar in Windows 7 it better take advantage of something like WPF instead of being a fancy mini-webpage.

sidebar needs to be brought back to the level it was in the Longhorn beta (part of the shell and could be "merged" with the taskbar

and Aero being out is good news too, it looks cool for a bit but isn't very usable

Aero isn't going anywhere. The article mentioned some modifications to it. Aero is actually very usable, as it does improve performance of your system by offloading the entire UI rendering to the GPU instead of the CPU.

I dont think the CPU gadget is even accurate. Try using CPUz

Um, what? The CPU gadget reports what the current utilization of the CPU is. CPUz is a system information tool.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
    • After I installed KB5095093, the volume on my ARM laptop won't go above 20%. It's stuck on the hearing protection level, which is pretty much useless if you want to listen to anything. I rolled back.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!