Users can create multiple site tabs and customize each with different feeds, gadgets, layouts, and color schemes.ĭesktop gadgets are desktop widgets small specialized applications that are generally designed to do simple tasks, such as clocks, calendars, RSS notifiers or search tools.

Some gadgets integrate with other Windows Live services, including Mail, Search, and Favorites. mail readers, weather reports, slide shows, search, games, etc.). Building off Microsoft's experimental page, can be customized with Web Gadgets, mini-applications that can serve almost any purpose (e.g. lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Web gadgets run on Web sites such as and Windows Live Spaces

SideShow gadgets - run on auxiliary external displays, such as on the outside of a laptop or even on an LCD panel in a keyboard, and potentially mobile phones and other devices.

Sidebar gadgets - run on the desktop or be docked onto, run on the Windows Sidebar.

Web gadgets - run on a web site, such as or Spaces.

Microsoft gadgets can also work on Windows XP Service Pack 3 but it needs Alky for Applications. Independent third party gadgets like Rainmeter continue to be developed and provided for later versions of Windows. Subsequently, Microsoft deemed them to be security vulnerabilities and discontinued developing and providing Microsoft Gadgets, which were no longer available by the time Windows 8 and 10 rolled out.

The gadgets and the Windows desktop Sidebar were a hallmark feature in Windows Vista and Windows 7 editions of the operating system. According to Microsoft, it will be possible for the different types of gadgets to run on different environments without modification, but this is currently not the case. Microsoft Gadgets are lightweight single-purpose applications, or software widgets, that can sit on a Microsoft Windows user's computer desktop, or are hosted on a web page.

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