Comments on: Creating a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget

By: Guru

Guru — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:58:43 +0000

Good job… kudos…

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:05:08 +0000

Thanks So much. I will give it a try

By: cretz

cretz — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:03:15 +0000

Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m going to respond to your question in steps.
First step is to use the template i mentioned in my post. This would provide a common reference for names and such. I also asume you know basic HTML and JavaScript DOM. If not, read up on those from http://w3schools.com.
Next, i’ll cover the setting which tells which gadget is shown. Since we only have 2 gadgets, only a boolean is needed. When it’s true, Gadget1 should be show, when false, Gadget2.
In the settings.html file, somewhere in the body you should have a
. in your javascript code for the onSettingsClosing event handler of the Gadget, you should have
var fg = document.getElementById(“setFlag”);
System.Gadget.Settings.write (“GadgetFlag”, fg.checked);
This saves the setting.
Next, in the onSettingsClosed event handler of the Gadget you should put the code that hides/unhides the corresponding div.
Lets asume that you have the following code in yout gadget.html file:

In this case, the code for the onsSettingsClosed would be:
var flg = System.Gadget.Settings.read(“GadgetFlag”);
var div1 = document.getElementById(“Gadget1″);
var div2 = document.getElementById(“Gadget2″);
if (flg)
{
div1.style.visibility = “visible”;
div2.style.visibility = “collapse”;
}
else
{
div1.style.visibility = “collapse”;
div2.style.visibility = “visible”;
}
}
This code shows one div, and hides the other, according to the flag.

I hope this makes things a bit clearer. If it still does not make any sense, don’t hesitate to ask for help.

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:33:01 +0000

Cretz, are you out there?

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:44:47 +0000

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, yes, I do need more help.
I’m just kinda winging writing gadgets. Could you please be very specific as far as code goes and where and what file to place the code in.
Thank You so much….

By: cretz

cretz — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:52:23 +0000

Let’s say you have 2 html files, each being the body of a gadget. You can place the contents of each gadget in a div, and hide one of the divs with css (display:none;).
In the settings html file, you can then put a flag to indicate that Gadget1 is visible or not.
In the new, combined gadget html file, add some javascript to show/hide the gadget divs according to the flag you set in the settings page.
This would be the idea, at a high level. If you need more details, please ask.

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:40:25 +0000

Hi,
I have written 2 gadgets and i want to combine the 2 and basically switch from 1 to the other using the settings file. Can that be done?

By: Rusty

Rusty — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:51:49 +0000

PHP not a proper language? Why do you use a blog written in PHP?

By: cretz

cretz — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:39:04 +0000

Since Silverlight does not allow you to do cross domain calls to a web service, this means that the page that contains the silverlight controls has to come from the same server as the web service.
Since gadgets are html pages stored on the hard disk of the client, and deplying the web service to all clients is not a good idea, you could try having iframes in the gadget and the flyout html pages, and have those iframes contain pages with silverlight that come from a web server that hosts both the silverlight app(s) and the web service(s).
More information about web services and silverlight, here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2007/06/14/calling-an-asmx-webservice-from-silverlight-use-a-static-port.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2007/07/03/silverlight-1-1-alpha-cross-domain-webservice-access-makes-mashups-tricky.aspx
http://msmvps.com/blogs/luisabreu/archive/2007/06/11/calling-web-services-from-your-silverlight-alpha-app.aspx

By: Poonam

Poonam — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:39:54 +0000

Hi my all database connectivity is in web service,what i do if i want to use web service in silverlight. i try it but it is giving me error.