Section 6.8. The Sidebar | Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual

6.8. The Sidebar

As you know, the essence of using Windows is running programs , which often produce documents . In Vista, however, there's a third category: a set of weird hybrid entities that Microsoft calls gadgets . They appear, all at once, floating in front of your other windows, at the right side of the screen. They're there when you first fire up Vista, or whenever you press +Space bar. (You can also open them by choosing Start All Programs Accessories Windows Sidebar.)

Welcome to the new world of the Sidebar (Figure 6-5).

Figure 6-5. When you summon the Sidebar, you get a fleet of floating miniprograms that convey or convert all kinds of useful information. They appear and disappear all at once, on a tinted translucent sheet.

What are these weird hybrid entities, anyway? They're not really programs, because they don't create documents or have listings in the All Programs menu. They're certainly not documents, because you can't name or save them. What they most resemble, actually, is little Web pages. They're meant to display information, much of it from the Internet, and they're written using Web programming languages like DHTML, Javascript, VBScript, and XML.

Vista's starter gadgets include a calculator, current weather reporter, stock ticker, clock, and so on. Mastering the basics of Sidebar won't take you long at all:

To move a gadget, drag it around the screen. It doesnt have to stay in the Sidebar area.

In fact, you can drag all of the gadgets off the Sidebar, if you like, and park them anywhere on the screen. You could even close the now-empty Sidebarright-click a blank spot and, from the shortcut menu, choose Close Sidebarand leave the gadgets themselves stranded, floating in place. (If they look too lonely , you can reopen the Sidebar by right-clicking the tiny Windows Sidebar icon in your notification area and, from the shortcut menu, choosing Open.)

Tip: If the gadget doesn't seem to want to move when you drag it, you're probably grabbing it by a clickable portion. Try to find a purely graphical spotthe spiral binding of the calendar, for example.And if all else fails, right-click the gadget. From the shortcut menu, choose Detach from Sidebar.
To close a gadget, point to it. Youll see the square X button appear at the gadget's top-left corner; click it. (You can also right-click a gadget and choose Close Gadget from its shortcut menu.)

To add a gadget to the Sidebar, click the + button at the top of the screen (Figure 6-5), or right-click any gadget (or the Sidebar notification-area icon) and choose Add Gadget from the Sidebar.

You've just opened the Gadget Gallery, a semi-transparent catalog of all your gadgets, even the ones that aren't currently on the screen (Figure 6-6). Open one by double-clicking its icon, or by dragging it to a blank spot on your Sidebar.

Figure 6-6. You may have to scroll the Gadget Gallery to see all the gadgets, by clicking the Page arrows at the top left of the window. When you're finished opening new gadgets, close the Gadget Gallery by clicking its X button.

If you add more gadgets than can fit on the Sidebar, a tiny appears at the top of the Sidebar. Click it to bring the next "page full of gadgets into view.

To rearrange your gadgets within the Sidebar, just drag them up or down, using any blank spot as a handle. The other gadgets slide out of the way.

6.8.1. Losing the Sidebar

To get rid of the Sidebar, you have several options.

Hide it by right-clicking a blank spot on the Sidebar. From the shortcut menu, choose Close Sidebar.

This technique just hides the actual Sidebar rectangle. It doesn't close any gadgets that you've moved onto your screen, and it's still technically running, using memory.
Quit it completely, so its not using up memory or distracting you, by right-clicking the Windows Sidebar notification-area icon. From the shortcut menu, choose Exit.
Make it stop auto-starting along with Windows by opening the Windows Sidebar Properties control panel. (Quickest way: Right-click the Windows Sidebar icon in your notification area. From the shortcut menu, choose Properties.) Turn off "Start Sidebar when Windows starts." Click OK.

6.8.2. Sidebar Tips

Like most new Vista features, Sidebar is crawling with tips and tricks. Here are a few of the biggies:

You can open more than one copy of the same gadget. Just double-click its icon more than once in the Gadget Bar. You wind up with multiple copies of it on your screen: three Clocks, two Weather trackers , or whatever. Thats a useful trick when, for example, you want to track the time or weather in more than one city, or when you maintain two different stock portfolios.
If you point to a gadget without clicking, two or three tiny icons appear to its right. One is the X (Close button), which youve already met. The one that looks like a tiny wrench opens the gadget's Settings dialog box, where, for example, you can specify which stocks you want to track, or which town's weather you want to see. The third one, a tiny grid, is a "grip strip" that lets you drag the gadget to a new spot on the screen.
Many of the gadgets require an Internet connection, preferably an always-on connection like a cable modem.

6.8.3. Gadget Catalog

Here's a rundown of the standard gadgets that come preinstalled in Vista. True, they look awfully simple, but some of them harbor a few secrets.

Tip: If you right-click an individual gadget, the shortcut menu offers, among other commands, an Opacity control. That is, you can make any individual gadget more or less see-throughsomething that makes more sense for the clock than for, say, the photo slideshow.

6.8.3.1. Calendar

Sure, you can always find out today's date by pointing to the clock on your taskbar. And this gadget isn't much of a calendar. It doesn't show your appointments, and it doesn't hook into Windows Calendar.

But it's much nicer looking than the taskbar one. And besides, you can use this calendar to look ahead or back. (Navigate to a different month by clicking or buttons . Change the year by clicking the current year digits at the top of the month view.) Click the red peeking corner to return to the month-view calendar.

6.8.3.2. Clock

Sure, this clock shows the current time, but your taskbar does that. The neat part is that you can open up several of these clocksdouble-click Clock in the Gadget Gallery repeatedlyand set each one up to show the time in a different city. The result looks like the row of clocks in a hotel lobby, making you look Swiss and precise.

6.8.3.3. Contacts

The concept behind this gadget is, of course, to give you faster access to your own address book.

Tip: This gadget is easier to understand if you drag it off of the Sidebar. Once free on your screen, it appears as a two -page binder, with the master list of contacts on the left side of the binding, and the individual Rolodex "page" on the right.

6.8.3.4. CPU Meter

A power user 's dreamnow you can watch your PC wheeze and gasp under its load in real time, with statistical accuracy.

6.8.3.5. Currency

This one's for you, world travelers (or global investors). This little gadget can convert dollars to euros, or shillings to francs, or whatever to whatever.

From the upper pop-up menu, choose the currency type you want to convert from: U.S. Dollars, Norwegian Krone, or whatever. Into the text box, type how many of those you want to convert.

Use the lower pop-up menu to specify which units you want to convert to .

You don't have to click anything or press any key; the conversion is performed for you instantly and automatically as you type. (Never let it be said that technology isn't marching forward.)

Note: This gadget actually does its homework. It goes online to download up-to-the-minute currency rates to ensure that the conversion is accurate.

6.8.3.6. Notes

Notes is a virtual Post-it note that lets you type out random scraps of texta phone number, a Web address, a grocery list, or whatever.

Edit the note by typing away. Right-click to access Cut, Copy, and Paste commands.
Add another page by clicking the + button (lower right); delete the current page by clicking the X button (lower left). Once you have more than a single page, use the or buttons to move among them.
Change the paper color , font, or size by clicking the Options button (tiny wrench) at the right side of the gadget. Font and Size controls appear there; click the or buttons to see the different pastel paper colors available.

6.8.3.7. Stocks

This gadget lets you build a stock portfolio and watch it rise and fall throughout the day.

It contains your list of stocks, their current prices (well, current as of 20 minutes ago), and the amount they've changedgreen if they're up, red if they're down. Click a stock's name to see its chart and other details in a Web page.

To set up your portfolio, proceed like this:

Add a stock by clicking the + button below the list, typing its name or stock abbreviation into the box at the top, and pressing Enter. If theres only one possible matchMicrosoft, for examplethe gadget adds it to the list instantly. If there's some question about what you typed, or several possible matches, you'll see a pop-up menu listing the alternatives, so you can click the one you want.

Collapse the "Add a stock" dialog box by clicking the + button again, or simply by clicking anywhere else on your screen.
Scroll the list by clicking the or buttons.
Remove a stock from the list by clicking the little X button that appears when you point to its name.
See company names instead of abbreviations by clicking the Options (wrench) button and then turning on "Display company name in place of symbol."

6.8.3.8. Picture Puzzle

The idea is to click the tiles of the puzzle, using logic to rearrange them back into the original sequence, so that they eventually slide together into the put-together photograph.

Change the photo by clicking the Options (wrench) button.
Pause the timer ( upper-left corner) by clicking the tiny clock.
See the finished photo, so you know what the goal is, by holding the cursor down on the little ? button.
Give up by clicking the double-arrow button in the upper-right corner of the puzzle window. (The same button rescrambles the puzzle.)

6.8.3.9. Weather

This gadget shows a handy current-conditions display for your city (or any other city), and, at your option, even offers a three-day forecast.

Before you get started, the most important step is to click the Options (wrench) button. In the Options dialog box, you'll see where you can specify your city and state or Zip code. Type it in and press Enter; the gadget goes online to retrieve the latest Weather.com info . You can also specify whether you prefer degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit. Click OK.

Now the front of the gadget displays the name of your town, general conditions, and current temperature.

6.8.3.10. Slide Show

So you've got a digital camera and a hard drive crammed with pictures. What are you gonna do with 'em all?

Slide Show presents one photo at a time for a few seconds each. Think of it as an electronic version of the little spouse 'n' kids photo that cubicle dwellers prop up on their desksexcept that the picture changes every 15 seconds.

The buttons in the tiny translucent control bar at the bottom of picture correspond to Previous Photo, Pause/Resume, Next Photo, and View (which opens up the picturemuch larger nowin Windows Photo Gallery).

Substitute your own photos. When you first install Vista, this gadget presents Microsofts favorite nature photos. Once you're sick of them, click the Options (wrench) button. In the dialog box, use the Folder controls to choose a folder full of your own pictures.
Set up the show timing. Fifteen seconds is an awfully long time to stare at one photo, of course. Then again, if the pix change too often, theyll be distracting, and you won't get any work done. Nonetheless, the Options dialog box lets you keep each slide on the screen for as little as 5 seconds or as long as 5 minutes.

The Options box also lets you create a crossfade effect as one slide morphs into the next. And the Shuffle checkbox, of course, makes Slide Show present your pix in a random order, rather than their alphabetical order in the folder.

Tip: If you drag this gadget off the Sidebar itself, you get to see your photos at a larger, more pleasant size.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
The Disappearing Notes, Stocks, or Weather

Hey! I filled my Notes gadget with grocery lists and Web addresses, and now they're gone!

Hey! I set up my home city in the Weather gadget, and now it's showing Redmond, Washington!

Hey! I painstakingly typed in all my stocks, and now it's forgotten them all!

Welcome to gadget hell, buddy.

Remember, gadgets are not actually programs. They don't, therefore, have their own preference files stashed away on the hard drive.

And sohere's the bad newsany time you close a gadget, you lose all the data you had typed into it . When you reopen Weather, it always shows Redmond, Washington (Microsoft's home town); when you reopen Stocks, it always shows the NASDAQ and S&P indexes; when you reopen Notes, the sticky notes are always empty; and so on.

And so, a word to the wise: don't click that X button unless you really mean it!

6.8.4. More Gadgets

The gadgets that come with Vista are meant to be only examplesa starter collection. The real beauty of gadgets is that people can write their own new ones for the whole world to enjoy: gadgets that show your local movie listings, regional gas prices, your email Inbox, upcoming Outlook appointments, and so on.

To see the current list of goodies that have been vetted by Microsoft, click "Get more gadgets online" in the Gadget Gallery described above. That takes you to the Microsoft Gadgets Gallery downloads page. (Alternatively, go straight to http://gallery.microsoft.com.)

You should have no problem finding gadgets that tell you local traffic conditions, let you know if your flight will be on time, help you track FedEx packages, provide a word (or joke, or comic strip) of the day, and so on.

6.8.4.1. Installing a gadget

Downloading and installing a gadget isn't hard, but there are a number of steps. Here's what you'll see if you use Internet Explorer (Section 9.1), for example:

A warning that youre installing software not written by Microsoft (click OK).
The File Download dialog box (click Save).
The Save As dialog box, asking where to store the download (click Save).

Unless you interfere, Internet Explorer drops the new gadget into your Personal Downloads folder. Open that folder, and then double-click the new gadget to install it.

6.8.4.2. Uninstalling a gadget

If you decide you don't want a gadget, you can just close it (right-click it; from the shortcut menu, choose Close Gadget). That leaves it on your PC, but dormant .

If, on the other hand, you really doubt you'll ever need it again, open your Gadget Gallery. Right-click the offending gadget; from the shortcut menu, choose Uninstall.

Now it's really, truly gone.