Modifying Windows Gadgets

One of the things I like to be on my desktop all the time is my ‘To Do List’. It keeps on increasing, and hence having a look at the list everyday is necessary to remind me that I still need to do those things.

Windows Vista comes with a cute and tiny Notes gadget with a sticky note kind of look. But it was too small for me and I wondered why they never had settings to decide its size.

I tried downloading some similar gadgets, but none was satisfying. They either lacked features or were too clumsy. After reading a white paper on gadgets, I found it was very easy to make a gadget of our own. But it was easier to modify an existing one with the features we wanted. :)

I took a copy of the Notes gadget source files from C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\Notes.Gadget and placed it in C:\Users\Sameer\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\LongNotes.Gadget folder. Edited the settings.html file to add a text box for height and modified the javascript files to change the height of notes according to the settings. It was that easy and I had the ‘Long Notes’ I wanted.