

Friday, June 8, 2007

Deploying a Vista SideBar Gadget

Bob Crawford recently asked on InstallShield Community:



Windows Vista: Creating a Simple Sidebar Gadget Virtual Lab



So in short, yes InstallShield 2008 supports deploying SideBar gadgets.


  1. Thanks for sharing.

    However, using development deployment method, how can I put or place the Gadget automatically on the sidebar?

    Can InstallShield 2008 support this ?

  2. So what I described only installs the gadget, it doesn't actually add it to the Sidebar.

    Best I can tell ( correct me if I'm wrong ) but there doesn't seem to be an automation interface for managing this. There is a settings.ini but that seems like it should be private storage.

    So assuming the above thread is correct, you'd have to shutdown sidebar, read the configuration data, apply business rules to correctly insert the new gadget, write the INI back out and start sidebar back up.

    Assuming you can get the business rules down correctly ( I can't find them documented ) then yes, InstallShield 2008 can do this.

  3. Thanks for your advice.

    "There is a settings.ini but that seems like it should be private storage."

    Yes, as I could not locate any documentation on the setting.ini too. So, has not venture into this area yet.

  4. Could you post a link here if you do? Thanks!