How to Use Desktop Widgets in Windows Vista
Welcome to PCWizKid’s Tech Talk. Today, I wanted to talk about the Windows Vista Gadgets. We’ve seen them on the Mac OS X. We’ve seen them on Ubuntu for example. Here I have them installed in Windows Vista. I installed a couple of default gadgets or widgets depending on how you want them call that come with Windows Vista and some might download it and installed separately.
So first things first, have you installed it, have you enabled the sidebar at all your self. To add more, you click on the plus sign here and it opens up the gadgets window to show you the default ones and a few that I have it already. So it’s very simple to just add a gadget to your distinct sidebar. You just drag and drop it over to the sidebar wherever you want to position it and let go and then there it is. Right so that’s how you add a gadget’s quite simple.
When you right click on it you might be able to adjust options or of course the opacity, the transparency on it and you can always drag it off of the sidebars so that’s one thing that people don’t necessarily know that you don’t have to have these running on it and you can always uninstall it if you don’t need it. Just right click on it and uninstall. So that’s the first thing that we want to talk about. The next thing is what type of widgets do you have or gadgets do you have that are useful to you. Right, so CPU usage I’ll use that one a lot. Here’s an RSS Feed Widget that I have installed of course. This one is putting to my PCWizKid’s Tech Talk blog and I have all the feeds for my blog being displayed there so you can always subscribe or add the RSS feed to the blog and then you could see the latest articles appearing and scrolling by.
So these are the common things that you can add and of course if you don’t’ want it displaying just click on the “x” if you want to access the tools or options. You see a little icon there of a wrench and then when you click on that wrench then it comes up with the properties.
Now if you go down to the bottom task bar you’ll see the Window side bar icon, if you right click on that and you’re going to properties that’s where you can enable or disable this from appearing say. So, if you don’t want it to start up every time you boot up into Windows Vista then uncheck it and then you can always have it on top of things or underneath it. If I check it to be on top obviously I have to try to apply this change now whatever window I put it will always be underneath it and the sidebar will be always on top.
I usually don’t like that so I’m going to disable it and put it back the way I had it. Of course you can have the sidebar on the left, on the right if you have dual monitors for example, a couple of monitors connected you can specify which one you want, so those are the couple of things that you can do and you can always get more gadgets so then you click on the get more gadgets on that Window. It takes you to the Vista gallery Microsoft.com website so it’s a Microsoft supported website that has top downloads and top rated gadgets that you can download and install.
All right so let’s just go here down and click on the top Vista shutdown control gadget. So when we click on that one it tells you a little bit about it and obviously these are free. We see a gadget that is asking for money then obviously stay away from it. When you click on download you’ll be able to install it, so you click on the install button after you read carefully the instructions and the permission there and let it open it up with the Window sidebar by default. You’ll get a pop-up security warning just let it install and as soon as you install it, now on the sidebar you can see that it put that new widget which allows me to restart lock or shutdown, add shortcuts to the Vista and if I go into the properties you can see I can change the background effect on my gadget.
So I put on my gray one there and it’s pretty easy to set up and of course like I mentioned earlier you can drag these out of the sidebar. It don’t have to be on the sidebar and you can get rid of the sidebar all together because you need all that additional space on your monitor so just move all those widgets out of there and basically, close the sidebar. So now you’ve got more space to open up your Windows and leave those gadgets on your desktop.
So now for example here I have Firefox running. I'm looking at my blog and I want to see those gadgets. Well, I can make them appear all at once by using the Windows key and the spacebar. So if I press that key combination you can see now the widgets appear and then I can do adjustments, look at them, see what I need to see and then if I click outside of those then they go away and then we’re back to browsing.
So when it go these are quick, easy, how-to’s on using the Vista Gadgets. I hope you enjoyed this video and thank you for watching.
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