I got working Vista sidebar under Windows 7

By jjrambo
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted
Desktop Gadgets are better than Vista Sidebar Gadgets because you don't have the sidebar getting in the way. You can right click each gadget and set them to be always on top and arranged to the left or right.

hmm, kind of like how you can drag gadgets off the sidebar in vista onto the desktop, and then right click the sidebar and close it and still have the gadgets on the desktop... hmmm....

Experienced

Mugwump00

Posted
Posted
And I doubt I'm alone in wanting some allways visible gadgets on the side of my screen to make use of my widescreen...

You are certainly not. Please MS (Brandon?) re-implement the "Always On Top" option; OK, so by default the Vista sidebar is horribly black and opaque when set so, but we can fix that by SB-styling it as "clear". Then, irrespective of using maximized windows or not, the Sidebar was at it's best and very handy for resource and RSS monitoring etc., as long as you were happy to forfeit the real-estate.

I wish some posters woudl contemplate the point of these discussions before posting these "it don't bother me" type posts; the W7 peek is cool, but for users who like maximzed apps and real-time info gadgets, it's much poorer experience. And no, I don't want gadgets floating over my app.

For those of the "I don't want it, don't bring it back" disposition, the word is "option"!

Grand Master

tomwarren Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
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I must admit the reasoning behind completely removing the sidebar after having it in Vista seems strange. I can understand though, it caused no end of headaches and was buggy and a resource hog. Would be nice for MS to leave it in somewhere though for those who are used to it in Vista, might be a shock not seeing it in 7.

Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
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The option is there though is it not? ... 'Always on Top' by right-click on the gadget?

Again, do you REALLY not see the problem with that ?

let me spell it out for you. The gadgets will then be on top of your maximized windows.... NOT desireable.

I must admit the reasoning behind completely removing the sidebar after having it in Vista seems strange. I can understand though, it caused no end of headaches and was buggy and a resource hog. Would be nice for MS to leave it in somewhere though for those who are used to it in Vista, might be a shock not seeing it in 7.

Hmm it wasn't the sidebar that was "buggy" and a resource hog, it was the whole gadget system. Wich incidentally was sidebar.exe.

btw guess what the exe for the gadgets in 7 is called :p

You don't rip out features to fix problems, you fix the problems. The only thing they did, was reove the actual sidebar form the sidebar code, and add in a few nifty edge snap functions. and bug fixes.

instead they could have done all that and left he sidebar in, or modified it in a way that made it more obviu to users who don't actually have to have the sidebar visible. since Vista users seem completely unable to understand that you can have desktop gadgets and hide the sidebar.

Collaborator

hadouken

Posted
Posted
Take whole folder Windows Sidebar and copy over the Windows 7 machine.

Holy crap, jjrambo is onto something here. Somebody should phone Microsoft and tell them they can just cut and paste components between versions of Windows. Why bother with Windows 7 when we can just get jjrambo armed with a beta version and tell him to let rip with Ctrl+C + Ctrl+V, we'll have the ultimate frankenstein monster of an OS in no time. This is groundbreaking. :p

I'm already thinking of names, how about "Vista: Reloaded" or "Vista: Ultimate Mega Super-duper Magnificant Business Edition"?

Mentor

Pikey

Posted
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Again, do you REALLY not see the problem with that ?

let me spell it out for you. The gadgets will then be on top of your maximized windows.... NOT desireable.

No .. I REALLY do not see your problem .. is it going to be that much of a big deal?

I think you will just have to get used to a different way of doing things ..

Mentor

Kyang

Posted
Posted
No .. I REALLY do not see your problem .. is it going to be that much of a big deal?

I think you will just have to get used to a different way of doing things ..

The problem is that there will be gadgets floating around on top of the maximized window. The user will have to move them around just to get the whatever is on that window.

What made the sidebar easier to use is that the user never had to do anything to place the gadgets in view. They are always visible, and they weren't in the way of anything.

This said, in Vista, I only used the gadgets for a month or so before I disabled the sidebar. I haven't restored it since. :( . What I would have liked to see is the new show desktop button toggle all of the gadgets to appear instead. :D .

Proficient

jjrambo

Posted
  • Author
Posted
This is terribly unwise. Not only are you giving up all the bugfixes, performance improvements, and security improvements that have been made in Windows 7's gadget platform, but you're also running in an unsupported configuration that could cause any number of unexpected problems.

What the heck does that mean? Windows 7 is fully compatible with Vista, what dependency would exist on Vista but not on Windows 7?

Nobody would expect that to fail. It's the other way (Win7 stuff on Vista) that's even slightly interesting, genius.

By dependencies i meant there is nothing specific in Vista or Windows 7 to cause to fail. I spent quite time with DirectX 10 to make it work under Windows XP. Funny thing is you can copy almost all files from Vista to XP but there are few which are part of System Windows files which of course you can't just overwrite. The code in those has to be modified.

When you run DX10.0 Game or better one of Nvidia Demos, each time you run under XP it will look for certain DX10 specific file. Any file which you can safely copy over to XP and not overwriting anything there has no direct dependencies. You end up with few needed to be changed - code wise. There is Alka project and they claim that you can run Crysis in DX10.0 under XP. I haven't looked at, nor i have time to look at DX SDK. I still believe to this day that MS could easily backport DX10.0 to Windows XP. Afterall DX10.0 is just API and Windows can run without it. I know that Aero can't run without DX Api, but you don't really need DWM and Aero to have Windows running. I'm really sorry MS infact didn't port DX10 to XP platform, but i understand their move from business point of view.

Grand Master

Calum Veteran

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  • Veteran
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...What I would have liked to see is the new show desktop button toggle all of the gadgets to appear instead. :D .

'Windows Key+Space' pressed together on the keyboard seems to bring the gadgets in front of your windows for you to edit or just see and then when you click on any part of any window, they go back to the desktop :)

Is that what you are looking for? I only found that out the other day :p It works on Windows Vista but I don't know about Windows 7.

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted

Having the actual sidebar removed introduces issues with the UX when Always on top is enabled. (For example, gadgets blocking text on a maximized app.) Bringing the sidebar back would remedy this. Why it was removed in the first place beats me. It enabled me to have a quick glance at the gadgets on the sidebar without me having to stop what I'm doing to see the gadgets (like you now have to do in 7). Very counter-productive. The show desktop functionality could stay, but should NOT be a replacement for the sidebar. What is MS thinking?

Experienced

Mugwump00

Posted
Posted

At the risk of re-invogorating an old thread, is anyone else finding these "floating" gadgets a right PITA when using Remote Desktop connects to connect to a high-res PC from a low-res one? They seem to switch themselves off until you right-click the Desktop and select Gadgets, which is OK, but their location is always messed-up.

I haven't got the setup anymore, but I am sure with Vista having the gadgets anchored to an on-screen Sidebar prevented this; even if it was very good at remembering their location on the bar, they were always at the edge of the screen, no matter what the dimensions of the screen were.

Another good reason to have the old-style Sidebar back as an option, or perhaps as a "powertoy" type d/l from MS?

Grand Master

Calum Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
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are there more ppl that succesfully tried this? i cant get the sidebar to work it keeps crashing

Brandon Live who works for Microsoft already said it's best not to do this. Do you wonder why it keeps crashing?

Here's what he said:

-----------------------------

This is terribly unwise. Not only are you giving up all the bugfixes, performance improvements, and security improvements that have been made in Windows 7's gadget platform, but you're also running in an unsupported configuration that could cause any number of unexpected problems.
Collaborator

MeDieViL02

Posted
Posted
Brandon Live who works for Microsoft already said it's best not to do this. Do you wonder why it keeps crashing?

Here's what he said:

-----------------------------

i know what he said but it works for some ppl so i'm gonna try to make mine work, i tried karls sidebar but it also kept on crashing, i use acronis true image in case something goes wrong, i allways make backups working in alpha software ;)

Neowinian

GnatGoSplat

Posted
Posted

Wow, I'm really disappointed Sidebar isn't in Windows 7. I completely agree with HawkMan 100% on everything. Sidebar is MUCH better than gadgets scattered around the desktop. Why would anyone even want a bunch of gadgets scattered around on the desktop, covered by windows or gadgets on top of windows? I never even bothered to pull any gadgets out of Sidebar in Vista except for the weather, just so I can look forward a few days. The rest of my gadgets: analog clock, dual core and RAM usage gauges, weather, notes, and calendar, I leave in Sidebar which is Always On Top and I can see them all with a quick glance even while typing or doing other things. It's a nice use of the extra width on my widescreen displays. Being forced to use loose gadgets plastered all over the desktop is as crappy as those useless gadgets or widgets or whatever they call it in Mac OS X. Sidebar was actually the biggest compelling reason for me to switch to Vista, and I also used Alky to install Sidebar on my XP machine at work. Who knows, maybe I'm unique in how I use Windows compared to the average user. I seldom tile windows or have multiple windows visible. If I'm using Photoshop, Firefox, Outlook, or writing something in Word, I'm focused on just that one task and have the window maximized. I like being able to one-click maximize my window.

I had no idea Sidebar had any kind of reputation for being unstable, slow or a resource hog. It's never caused any stability problems, slowed anything down, or hardly used any resources on any of my Vista machines or my XP machine, and all have Sidebar as "Stay On Top".

I hadn't been keeping up and just learned today of Sidebar's absence in Windows 7... and it REALLY bums me out.

Grand Master

MikeChipshop Member

Posted
  • Member
Posted

you know what....?

After following this thread i decided to give the whole 'Sidebar on top' thing a go in my Vista install (i've only just come in possession of a wide screen), i can honestly say it's very handy and i can now sympathise with the users who are unhappy with the removal of this feature from 7

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