Run "original" Vista sidebar (sidebar) on WINXP)

Middle sidebar (note: in Windows Vista Chinese version, sidebar is officially translated as "sidebar", rather than "sidebar") is a new feature launched by Vista. You can use the sidebar to manage your computer in a simple and efficient manner. However, this component is provided only to Vista.

For various reasons, users who cannot upgrade Vista cannot enjoy the convenience of the Vista sidebar? Of course not! Someone on the Internet extracts the sidebar from Vista so that users of the XP system can also use this function. Next, let's take a look at the experience of running the "original" Vista sidebar on the XP system.

I. Vista sidebar Installation and Operation overview

To install the tool, you must first upgrade the browser to IE7. Otherwise, some gadgets may not run properly. (Download and install IE7)

Unzip the downloaded Vista sidebar file package, you can see a total of two executable files Sidebar_XP-Extras and Sidebar_XP-Install. Run the former first, install the required English font with Visual C 8.0, and then install the Sidebar_XP-Install. Follow the prompts and click "Next" to complete the installation process.

After the installation is complete, the Vista sidebar runs automatically, as shown in figure 1. Figure 1 Vista sidebar Effect

In addition to the display on the sidebar, you can also drag your favorite gadgets to the desktop (2) Figure 2 effects of the gadgets on the desktop

2. Add a widget to the sidebar

You can customize the gadgets you need according to your own needs. Click the "+" at the top of the sidebar, or right-click in the blank area, and select the "add gadgets" menu in the pop-up menu to bring up the "gadgets library" window (3 ). Figure 3 gadgets library window

In the tool library window, select the tool you want to add and double-click it to add it to the sidebar. Click the "Show Details" button at the bottom of the window. When you select the tool, A brief description of the tool is displayed below.

In addition, if you think that the gadgets in the gadgets library cannot meet your needs, you can also click the "get more online gadgets" link in the lower right corner of the window, or directly visit http://gallery.microsoft.com/vista.aspxto Go To The microsoftbox tool Official Page ). Select the desired tool and click "download to sidebar" to download the tool and add it to the tool library for your use. Figure 4 more gadgets provided by Microsoft

3. Adjust the sidebar

You can adjust the location and content of the widget as needed. Here, the RSS source reader is used as an example to describe how to move the mouse to the RSS source reader, you can see three buttons on the right. The functions are "off", "set", and "drag" (5 ). Figure 5 modify a widget

Click the close button to close the current widget, remove it from the sidebar, and click the set button to set the content, format, and data source displayed by the widget (6 ), when you click the drag button below, you can drag the widget to adjust its position in the sidebar, or even drag the widget to the desktop. Figure 6 in addition to adjusting the widget, you can also set the sidebar in the properties setting window of the widget. Right-click the system tray icon and select the "properties" menu item, you can open the sidebar property settings window (5 ). Figure 7 sidebar attribute setting window

Here, you can set whether the sidebar is started with windows, the display position of the sidebar, whether to stick it to the top, and maintain running gadgets.

Iv. system resource usage and summary

The Vista sidebar provides great convenience for users to operate their computers. But what is the usage of system resources when running this tool? Does it occupy as much virtual memory as some desktop tools do? When I started eight gadgets at the same time, I found that there were two processes running on the Vista sidebar. The total memory and virtual memory occupied were MB and 38 MB, sometimes occupying more resources, this costs a lot for the general user memory. If there is no 1 GB memory, the machine will feel slow during running. Figure 8 memory usage on the Vista sidebar

From the above trial, we can see that the sidebar extracted from Vista can run stably in the XP system, which is much better than other imitation programs, it can be said that this tool meets the needs of users who cannot upgrade to the Vista system.