Microsoft Vistas Sidebar

In order to add gadgets, Vistas Sidebar sent us off to microsoftgadgets.com. It appeared, however, that we could only add gadgets to Live.com sites.

Vistas Sidebar includes a cool-looking launcher application that duplicates the functionality of the tried and true quick launch tool bar.

Vistas Sidebar RSS reader linked in to the feeds to which we subscribed through Internet Explorer 7–we were only able to choose one feed at a time, however.

We could choose among four different recycle bin images.

Courtesy of Vistas compositing desktop, the Sidebar bled smoothly into our desktop background.

The slide show gadget appeared promising, but we were disappointed that we couldnt resize the gadget in order to better view the revolving pictures.

Vistas world clock, which appears in build 5308 in more or less the same form that we first saw it, over two years ago, at PDC 2003, functions as a world clock.

With so many widgets already available for Apple OS Xs competing Widget feature, wed like to see Microsoft get to work interoperating with the Macs widgets.

We like the way that OS Xs widgets can spread out across the desktop, and then be spirited off into the background

gDesklets, an application that runs on most Linux and Unix desktops, also boasts a large number of available applets. (gdesklets.org)

Were particularly fond of the system-monitoring applets that run with gDesklets.