Definitely recommended for people who like gadgets, and it is free. Yes Posted Sep 02, for v Highly recommended by fanofthe May 31, Read all my 2 reviews. If you miss the Windows 7 gadgets, you'll enjoy the 8GadgetPack.
In Windows 8. The 8GadgetPack functions just like the gadgets that shipped with Windows 7. It ships with 56 gadgets. The 8GadgetPack can also be installed on Windows Some units will be in color and some will be grayscale or monochrome. Some will allow bitmaps to be displayed while some may only allow text.
Some units will offer varying amounts of on-board memory for caching data while others may have no on-board memory at all. Some will offer buttons allowing navigation of the cached data. Some may offer touch-sensitive displays. Some may offer a built-in wireless technology such as Bluetooth so that the computer can communicate with the device without it being physically connected to the computer. Some may offer a headphone jack allowing you to listen to music or video that has been downloaded into its memory.
Figure 1 shows a prototype notebook computer with a SideShow device mounted in its cover and a close-up picture of the SideShow device itself. This SideShow device is self-powered, meaning that it is powered using the computer's battery; however, the computer doesn't have to be turned on for the user to interact with the device.
When on, this particular device consumes about 4 milliwatts of power, compared to the 75 or so watts of power consumed by the whole computer when it is turned on. And of course, you can modify your own application to export its data to the SideShow device too.
I'll show you how to do this later in this article. The auxiliary display allows the user to select a song and have Media Center play it. What's cool about this is that the user's television or monitor doesn't have to be turned on in order to listen to a song.
Also, while watching a movie, program information can be sent from the Media Center PC to the Windows SideShow device, allowing you to read it without affecting the playback of the movie on the monitor. Furthermore, you can use the remote control in order to view the TV guide data and schedule recordings. Other examples of SideShow devices include keyboards with LCD displays, digital picture frames, and even mobile phones. A single computer can have multiple SideShow devices connected to it simultaneously.
For example, the prototype notebook computer shown in Figure 1 could have both a keyboard and a remote control talking to it. Each of these displays could show similar or different kinds of information. When the user opens this applet, she is greeted by a window similar to the one in Figure 3.
The leftmost panel shows the SideShow hardware devices currently installed, sorted by the date and time of their installation. In the main panel is a grid. The first column shows the installed applications that know how to communicate with SideShow devices; these are the SideShow gadgets.
Each additional grid column represents a SideShow device attached to the computer. By selecting the checkboxes in the grid, the user indicates which SideShow devices a gadget can talk to. The user can also configure a specific SideShow device by selecting it at the top of the grid. Here you can configure screen appearance and behavior theme, language, font size, brightness, backlight, and so on , configure security and privacy settings use a PIN to unlock the device, delete all data when the user logs off the computer , configure gadgets turn gadgets on or off, change order of appearance , and uninstall the device.
Many SideShow devices will have their own on-board memory that is used to cache gadget data. A gadget must be running in order to send data to a SideShow device, meaning that the computer must be powered on. So, Windows Vista allows the user to configure when and how often the computer should wake itself up and run the gadget. The user configures this by selecting the "Set my computer to wake automatically" option shown in Figure 3.
When selecting this option, the window shown in Figure 5 appears. After being awakened, the computer will stay awake until the machine has been idle for the amount of time specified using the machine's Power Options Control Panel applet. Note that some computers do not support auto-wake and some applications can prevent a machine from going back to sleep. Figure 6 shows an architectural diagram of how SideShow gadget applications communicate with SideShow hardware devices.
Each hardware device must come with a user-mode device driver that will have to be installed into Windows Vista. There are many benefits to user-mode device drivers, including easier development, easier debugging, greater system stability, and improved security. A SideShow gadget application can be written in native code or in managed code.
A native application will control the devices that the user has connected it to by using COM components and methods implemented in AuxiliaryDisplayApi. The original name for SideShow was Auxiliary Display. The main goal of the COM components is to abstract away from the developer the fact that different devices are or are not connected and that the devices connected support different capabilities screen size, color, and so on.
A managed SideShow gadget will control the devices connected to it using types defined in the Microsoft. SideShow namespace. These types are implemented in the Microsoft. I designed and implemented this for the Windows Vista team and it is downloadable via Microsoft Download Center. Unfortunately, due to some timing issues with the release, the assembly is not guaranteed to exist on all installations of Windows Vista.
If you write a managed SideShow gadget using this assembly, you will have to ensure that this DLL gets on to the end user's machine. This application runs on Windows Vista and emulates a SideShow hardware device. To get the simulator working, you must first run the following from a command prompt:.
This registers the COM components required by the simulator. You only need to register the COM components once on a machine. Then, whenever you want to test your gadget, you run the VirtualSideShow. The Microsoft. SideShow and the Microsoft.
SimpleContentFormat namespaces, making it easy to build SideShow gadgets or to integrate SideShow functionality into an already existing application. The most important and most-used classes are described in Figure 7.
When you install a gadget, your setup program should create a new registry subkey based on the GUID you've created for your gadget:. Under this registry subkey you then need to add a few registry values, as described in Figure 8. Your gadget's setup program should create its own registry subkey and set any of the registry values it desires.
Typically, an installation program will place these registry additions in a. When setup is near completion, you should execute the following command, which will cause Windows Vista to display a tooltip alerting the user that your gadget application has been installed:. The GadgetManager task will not show the tooltip if no devices are installed, if it detects that no new gadgets have been installed since it ran last, or if the user turned it off by unchecking the "Notify me when new gadgets are installed" checkbox see Figure 3.
Once the gadget is installed, users can open Control Panel to configure the gadget and connect it to whatever hardware devices they desire.
For security reasons, however, by default a newly installed gadget is not allowed to communicate with any devices. When a gadget is running, it usually sends data to its connected devices periodically. To change the stock name you have to click on the stock name or stock symbol. Gadget version: 1. Note: To find the stock symbol you have to search from Yahoo Finance. Currency Meter can monitor up to 6 currency rates also known as foreign exchange rate or forex rate for currencies, gold, palladium, platinum and silver.
So you can set the alert and key in the rate at which you want to make your transfer, then it will keep scanning the market every 10 minutes but you can reduce this to 1 minute. When the rate is achieved it will send an alert sound and alert icon. Amazon Search is a simple and convenient gadget that allows you to search Amazon in 9 different countries.
It displays information related to your GPU vendor, model, clock speed, temperature, usage , memory clock speed, usage , fan speed, usage , shader clock speed, PCB temperature, and memory controller.
Gadget version: 2. Battery Meter is a very useful gadget for monitoring your battery. It also includes flyout features that display all of your battery information.
It also includes flyout features that display all of your drive information. Earthquakes Meter is a very famous gadget for Windows that monitors earthquakes around the world.
Gadget version: 3. Control System allows for simple, easy-to-click shutdown, standby, restart, logoff or hibernation of your computer from Windows Gadgets.
0コメント