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As there are those gadgets available for the Windows Vista Sidebar and for Windows 7, I'd really like to know if you can integrate those into your .NET app. I want a similar feature and possibly use already existing gadgets into my app.

Can it be done?

casperOne
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Falcon
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    Have a look here http://www.nikhilk.net/SidebarGadgets.aspx – Fergal Moran May 09 '11 at 14:31
  • I found that page before, and while you can learn how to develop gadgets in .NET, it does not loose a word about how you can integrate gadgets in your own .NET app. – Falcon May 09 '11 at 14:39
  • They're not gadgets if you integrate them in your own application, they're just floating windows? – Fergal Moran May 09 '11 at 14:40
  • Yes, but I want to display/integrate those gadgets in my application like it's done on the desktop. I wonder whether there's an API which can do it. I don't need/want anymore WINApi magic in my app. – Falcon May 09 '11 at 14:49
  • Microsoft (nor any other company) will provide you the ability to host plug-ins written for their application. – John Arlen May 10 '11 at 23:00

1 Answers1

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This is likely possible but is not going to be very easy. You're application will need to do everything that the OS would normally do to host them, including parsing the gadget manifests, setting up a web container for each to run in, calling each gadget's event handlers correctly, etc.

Basically, everything that a gadget is supposed to do to integrate with the OS, you'll need to support. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965850%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

This is not a project for the faint of heart but would be pretty cool if you can get it to work.

Have fun!

BTW, there is a W3C draft standard for widgets but it's not really practical yet. See http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/1

toddles2000
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