Talk:Microsoft Gadgets

Apple copyed konfabulator and superkaramba 's idea
The origin of widgets is Konfabulator, as everybody says. Apple stealed konfabulator's idea and it stealed Linux's superkamramba's idea first.

who is who? which is which? huh? and there's many of other wigdet engine, and MS improved windows sidebar with wigdet ideas.


 * Desk Accessory AlistairMcMillan 22:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * First of all, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a ranthouse for one's own ideas. The argument of who "copied" who could be twisted several ways, including many of which are in Apple's favor, not Konfabulator - like the Desk Accessories of the original Lisa and Macintoshes. Please refrain from making Wikipedia a soapbox on which to tout one's own viewpoints - be neutral and fair. And please, sign your comments.

Kungming2 01:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What about Window's Active Desktop? --Armaetin 23:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Re:Merge
We Need To Merge This as they both are virtually identical! Swissbanker 09:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Need to disambiguate: I thought desktop gadgets refered to multiple topics, ranging from all the Apple Widgets, Google Desktop, etc. If that doesn't happen tho, please continue to merge. Logical2u (Wikibreak) 21:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is currently a real mess. There should probably be a generic article for Desk Accessories, then one for each platform. Other articles that need to be part of this cleanup: Desk Accessory, Dashboard (software), Yahoo! Widget Engine. Along the way, the Desk Accessories for GEM should probably be split into their own article. -- Steven Fisher 21:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge done & changed title. How you want to handle this from here is up to you all. Cwolfsheep 20:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Bias or poorly written?
Is this article gleaned from a press release or is it just poorly phrased? eg "Microsoft extends the widget idea to the web sites and to the devices which can be any devices. According to Microsoft, it will be possible for the different types of gadgets to run on different environments". "Microsoft extends"?! That hardly sounds like a NPOV. This article needs cleaning up.

Add a link to the Windows Live Gallery entry?
Does it make sense to add a link to the Windows Live Gallery entry here? Chris Butler MSFT 18:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This really does need to be disambiguated
Desktop Gadgets are not a Microsoft defined term, and do not refer to Vista Gadgets alone. The term desktop gadget needs to be indepedently categorized, and Vista gadgets can then rightfully belong there as one of the desktop gadgets available.

Sangeeta.Patni 09:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)Sangeeta

Other gadget implementations
Why do we need them here? By the same rationale that we follow to disallow linking to articles about competing products in the See also section, I think this section should be removed as well. -- soum  (0_o) 08:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Could you point that out to me? I'd not heard of that before, and I would personally disagree with such a rule. I can see quite clearly why external links would not be wanted, but it's often hard to discuss a software product without making reference to its competitors, in the same way you couldn't discuss Microsoft without mentioning IBM, or Windows without Linux or UNIX. GreenReaper 16:13, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * There is not a written rule anywhere. But many editors do hold it as a general consensus. Just listing out the competitions is not very informative. Readers have no idea where they overlap and where they don't, unless they read through all the listed articles. Instead, the information about the competition is merged into the text of the article, with a line or two describing how the subject of the article and the competition is similar or dissimilar. Sure, we can cover a lot less of the competitors' products. But we can choose the most visible ones but can end up providing more information. -- soum  (0_o) 19:25, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

"Desktop Gadget" redirecting here
Why does "desktop gadget" redirect here? Microsoft Vista's implementation is not the only one (Google desktop is another for example). It's as if "instante messaging" redirected to "Windows Live Messenger". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hugo 87 (talk • contribs) 20:05, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So fix it. Nobody is stopping you from clicking on "redirected from Desktop Gadget" and editing it. GreenReaper (talk) 23:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Merger with Windows Desktop Gadgets
Oppose, This article is specifically about the gadgets by Microsoft while the other solely discusses the features that the widgets can have and talks more about the gadgets in general. --1.55.1.190 (talk) 09:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Gadgets are discontinued for Windows 7?
It seems to me that Gadgets were discontinued for Windows 8 and later, and the Apps described on this page need Windows 10 to run. That means to me no new gadgets for Windows 7, and any I have installed now are dangerous, and perhaps I should delete or uninstall them, provided I can find them figure out how to delete them.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 02:33, 21 October 2018 (UTC)