Quick Vista Gadget Development Note

This is more of a reminder for me than anything else, but since I kept searching for this tonight with little luck maybe somebody else will get some use out of it.

When developing a Vista gadget it can be realy useful to set up a gadget folder somewhere other than “%userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows sidebar\gadgets”. Unfortunately to have the sidebar notice it you’ll need to symlink it. That’s a pretty easy process, and note that just making a shortcut to the folder WON’T WORK.

  1. Open an explorer window to %userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows sidebar\gadgets
  2. Open a cmd prompt with elevated privileges (start, “cmd”, shift right-click, run as admin)
  3. cd in cmd to %userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows sidebar\gadgets
  4. mklink /D "Gadget Name.gadget" "c:\path\to\development gadget"

That’ll set up a symlink so you can edit your gadget wherever you want and still have Vista add it to the gadget browser. Handy for those of us that like having all our programming projects in one spot.

August 5th, 2008 Comments Off

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