How do I change the details displayed for my sidebar gadget?

23 Apr 2007 09:08 sidebar-gadgets

When you click on the “Show details” expander in the Windows Vista gadget gallery, Windows displays various information about the selected gadget (“Calendar 1.0.0.0” etc., in this example).

These details come from your Gadget.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<gadget>
  <name>BasicGadget</name>
  <version>1.0.0.0</version>

  <author name="Roger Lipscombe">
    <info url="http://www.differentpla.net/content/" text="differentpla.net" />
    <logo src="Logo.png" />
  </author>

  <copyright>(C) 2007</copyright>
  <description>Basic Sidebar Gadget</description>
</gadget>

A couple of things to note:

There’s not a lot of room on the right-hand side of the Gadget Gallery, so keep your author name and copyright information short.
The information field can handle different display and URL strings. This is useful because it’s displayed on the right-hand side of the Gallery, and so should be kept reasonably short.

The Logo.png file should be 48 pixels high, and 48 pixels wide. You can use the same file as the icon used in the gallery, but you’ll probably put your company logo here instead.