Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

05-06-2008 2:19 AM |

 Hello all,

 I'm interested in building some gadgets for the Vista sidebar and I've heard that this is possible using Silverlight.  Is this true, and can someone point me to a resource explaining how to get started?

Thanks!

-Jeremy
 

Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

05-06-2008 2:31 AM |

Here is a sample with silverlight 1 http://blog.benhall.me.uk/2007/05/vista-sidebar-gadget-using-silverlight.html

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

05-06-2008 12:17 PM |

Thanks for the reply, but I was hoping to use Silverlight 2.0 instead of Silverlight 1.0.  Does anyone have resources on this?

Thanks in advance. 

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

05-06-2008 12:35 PM |

You just have to change the javascript call in the html page that create the silverlight plugin by the object tag you will find in any silverlight 2 html sample

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

05-07-2008 1:15 AM |

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think it's that easy.  Ben Hall's example makes use of Silverlight 1.0 and therefore all the code is written in Javascript, not C# (since there was no support for managed code yet at that point).  Secondly, Silverlight 2.0 is not backwards compatible with previous versions of Silverlight.   

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

06-29-2008 4:30 PM |

Hi,

 I also try to run a  silverlight 2 gadget, cause I "need" managed script support. Everything works fine in Internet Explorer, but when I add the gadget into sidebar, I only get a blank field. Now I updated everything to Beta 2 and now there's the following message: "InitializeError - Could not download the Silverlight application. Check web server settings"

When I open the html from gadget folder in IE it works, so I think it couldn't be the path, but why can't the sidebar "download" the silverlight application? THe xap is located in the ClientBin folder I think it shouldn't be a problem for sidebar to access that folder.

Has anyone any idea?

By the way: Why will Beta2 not support conversions in SetValue, especially Int32->Double for Canvas.Left or TopProperty?

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

12-23-2008 3:11 PM |

I've just run into this same issue described above by Zonenjunge.  I've created working Silverlight 2 gadgets before but on a different machine.  Thus, I'm thinking this is a system configuration issue.

In the interest of saving time, has anyone encountered and solved this issue?

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

12-23-2008 3:20 PM |

Check Ivana's blog, which has a walkthrough of this that may help you: http://geeks.ms/blogs/itilca/

Re: Re: Silverlight Vista Sidebar Gadgets

12-23-2008 3:28 PM |

Ahh yes, I was missing the x-gadget:/// prefix! 

<script type="text/javascript">
    Silverlight.createObject(
        "x-gadget:///Widget.xap",
        $d("WidgetContainer"),
        "Widget", 
        {
            width:      "100%",
            height:     "100%",
            background: "transparent",
            windowless: "true",
            version:    "2.0.31005.0"
        },
        { onError: onSilverlightError });            
</script>

Thank you John (and Ivana!)