Windows Gadgets
Leana Eckes
Gadgets aren't available anymore. Instead, Windows 10 now comes with lots of apps that do many of the same things and much more. You can get more apps for everything from games to calendars. Some apps are better versions of the gadgets you love, and many of them are free.
If you move your cursor above a gadget you can drag it around your desktop. It doesn't need to stay on the sidebar. There will also appear some buttons next to the gadget. Click on the X to close a gadget or on the wrench icon to access its options.
The next gadget is a clipboard manager. Here I copied the installer file and then the name of the file. Clipboarder will display everything you copy to the clipboard. By clicking on an element you make it the current clipboard. This way you can select older clipboards and paste them into other applications. You can also open a clipboard directly.
Here you can, for example, click on the first checkbox to make the sidebar always visible. This way you have your gadgets always in sight. A disadvantage is though, that the close button of maximized windows isn't on the top-right corner anymore. To fix this you can put the sidebar on the left side.
This way you can keep track of some applications on the side. You can hover with your cursor over the preview to peek into the window, just like in the taskbar. Right-clicking on the preview gives you some options as well.
Screenlets are the Linux alternative for "Windows Gadgets". Screenlets are small owner-drawn applications (written in Python) that can be described as "the virtual representation of things lying/standing around on your desk". Sticky notes, clocks, rulers, ... the possibilities are endless.
Cairo-Dock is an attractive, Lightweight eye-candy dock to launch your applications. I'm mentioning it hare because of it's ability to add add-ons. It comes bundled withmany applets including this weather applet. You can use applets inside dock or detach and use them as gadgets.
Ubuntu with Unity has no widgets, instead they have indicators. Application indicators provide a simple and effective API to provide an application icon in the notification area in the top-right part of the screen, and provide simple, accessible, and complete access to key parts of your application.
Find out whether you need to wear a jacket, a t-shirt or a waterproof suit... If you click on the indicator, you will get more information about, humidity, dew point, feels like, wind velocity and wind direction, weather condition.
For some reason, Gadgets in my Windows 7 OS stopped displaying properly. Did a little research on internet and found that UAC may be the culprit. However, despite putting UAC on level 2, they still don't appear properly.
Have you tried resetting the windows sidebar folder in your application data folder? Try killing the sidebar process (from the task manager), then go to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar and remove all of the files (or copy them elsewhere to keep a backup). Then, open up the gadgets window from the desktop and try adding gadgets. It should behave the same as if you were adding gadgets to a new account.
At some point Microsoft deprecated the Windows 7 gadgets, closed the gadget store (or at least curtailed it) and recommended no one use gadgets due to major security issues that they had no plans to fix (why would they fix it? Windows 8 has live tiles! /sarcasm). They even deployed a Windows update to disable desktop gadgets, although the sidebar.exe is still there. I wonder if this behavior is a result of those changes. It could also be due to some utilities that are associated with your graphics adapter. Have you tried turning off all the Aero glass stuff to see if the behavior changes?
Gadgets still work fine, mine work great with aero and everything running. You are not supposed to use them per MS but I have no problems with them. I run that Network one as well as the System Monitor II and the GPU one as well.
@Everyone I have fixed the problem. i went to display and you know how it says small, medium and large. well my desktop was on medium which it came out of the box like that and it was nice to see things but i changed it to small and logged out and it fixed it up 100%. Thanks guys for all the help i would give the best answer to someone but i kinda solved my own problem.
I generally HATE when people reward themselves with a Best Answer, but Athorn you did in fact solve the problem. Congrats you get a best answer, I believe you answered the question before anyone else, you deserve it. Now just give out your 2 helpful posts :-).
Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features a sidebar anchored to the side of the desktop. Its widgets can perform various tasks, such as displaying the time and date. In Windows Vista, the widgets are restricted to a sidebar but in Windows 7, they can be freely moved anywhere on the desktop.
Windows Desktop Gadgets was discontinued in Windows 8. The Windows 8 Live Tiles can perform a similar function, but they are only visible when the Start menu is visible. They run in a more restrictive environment, making them less risky, but also less useful for some purposes, like system monitoring.
Windows Sidebar originated in a Microsoft Research project called Sideshow (not to be confused with Windows SideShow). It was developed in the summer of 2000, and was used internally at Microsoft.[1] It included a clock, traffic reports, and IM integration.
Windows Sidebar appeared in build 3683 of Windows Vista circa September 2002 and was originally intended to replace the notification area and Quick Launch toolbar in Windows, but these plans were scrapped after the development reset in mid-2004.[2] Windows Sidebar was rebuilt and began to appear in Windows Vista builds in the second half of 2005. Some reviewers and Macintosh enthusiasts have pointed out the Sidebar's similarities in form and function to Konfabulator (later Yahoo! Widget Engine), which appeared several years previously, and the Dashboard widget engine first included with Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X v10.4, which had been released a few months earlier.
Windows Desktop Gadgets was included in all beta releases of Windows 8 but did not make it to the final release. Instead, on 10 July 2012 (which is in the intervening time between the last beta of Windows 8 and its final release), Microsoft issued security advisory to disable Sidebar and Desktop Gadgets on Windows Vista and 7 because of a security vulnerability that could allow remote code execution.[3]
Windows Desktop Gadgets is a feature of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (excluding the Windows Server family of the operating system). It hosts mini-applications or "gadgets" which are a combination of scripts and HTML code. Their use cases include displaying system time, downloading and displaying RSS feeds, or controlling other software such as Windows Media Player. In Windows Vista, gadgets can run "docked" in the sidebar. In Windows 7, they can "float" anywhere on the desktop. It is also possible to run multiple instances of a gadget simultaneously. Windows Vista and 7 sidebar also works on Windows XP.[4]
Windows Vista ships with eleven gadgets: Calendar, Clock, Contacts, CPU Meter, Currency Conversion, Feed Headlines, Notes, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Stocks, and Weather. Several other gadgets available during the Vista beta such as App Launcher, Feed Viewer, Number Puzzle, Recycle Bin and Egg Timer never made it to the final release of Windows Vista. Windows 7 adds a Media Center gadget and removes the Contacts, Notes and Stocks gadgets.
Originally, Microsoft provided a link to a web site called Windows Live Gallery where additional Sidebar gadgets that have been created by third-party developers could be downloaded. The site was officially retired on October 1, 2011.[5][6]
The choice to run a gadget is presented to the user in the same way that the choice to run any application downloaded from the Internet is presented. Information about the author of the gadget is displayed in a dialog box that indicates there is risk associated with this file. After the user accepts the warning, the gadget will run with all of the permissions associated with the user's login account.
the risks that gadgets are exposed to are the same as those faced by any web-based application, e.g. Man-In-The-Middle or code injection. Similar issues existed in earlier versions of most web browsers but modern browsers have specifically implemented controls to attempt to mitigate many of these issues. These controls have not been implemented in the Gadgets platform, leaving them vulnerable to well-known and thoroughly discussed attacks.
- We have you by the gadgets, black hat.
so indeed running arbitrary code is part of HTA's but because the sidebar and gadgets platform didn't mitigate it and were quite pessimistic, thinking that all gadget programmers would write safe code and wouldn't try to exploit or do things gadgets aren't suppose to do.
I still think the question is quite vague because you say: well they allow to run arbitrary code and it's part of the model and concept and they didn't mitigate it so what's the exploit? it's already exploited... - this is the whole idea :)
It can be asked about every flaw and attack and that's exactly the problem - it was by design a problem and wasn't secure it was discovered that since no mitigation and since you are really able to run and execute the malicious code with no problem these gadgets have a flaw.
This smacks of laziness on the part of Microsoft: The Gadgets platform was not highly regarded or widely used (despite the potential of delivering an unprecedented level of capability and integration of web-features directly into the desktop), so rather than make any attempt whatsoever to safeguard the user from malicious Gadgets, they simply discontinued them.
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