Create gadgets for Vista and Windows 7 using WPF

Gadgets are mini applications with a variety of possible uses. They can connect to web services to deliver business data, weather information, news updates, traffic maps, Internet radio streams, and even slide shows of online photo albums. Gadgets can also integrate with other programs to provide streamlined interaction. In this post, I’ll show you how to create a Gadget using WPF for Vista and Windows 7 sidebar.

My sample gadget shows the respective .NET type for every SQL Server and the Db method accessor for the type. The gadget is created as an xbap application. The post build script installs the gadget when the application is build.

The gadget.xml file included as part of the project contains the details of the gadget

xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<gadget>

  <name>DbType to .NET mappername>

  <namespace>BlogsPrajeesh.BlogSpot.Gadgetsnamespace>

  <version>1.0.0.0version>

  <hosts>

    <host name="sidebar">

      <base type="HTML" apiVersion="1.0.0" src="Main.htm" />

      <permissions>Fullpermissions>

      <platform minPlatformVersion="1.0" />

    host>

  hosts>

gadget>

The html file contains the link to the .xbap project, which has the xaml files. Leave a comment with your email address and I’ll mail you the source code for the gadget.