Thursday, January 29, 2009

 

Visual Studio Template for Sidebar Gadget

The Gadget books comes with a Visual Studio Temopate with all the reusable functionalities. To create a Gadget all you need to do is Install the tempalte and Create New Project as you do in Visual Studio and Select Innovate.Gadget from your templates

Here is one of the user email I recieved with a query about installing the template. So if you are having similar issues read on.

The Problem (user email)

I would like some clarification on the Gadget Template code so I can make good use of the template if you please. 
The information on installing this has been a bit confusing. Should I unzip the files and put them in the C:\Users\User_Pin\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\Project Templates folder, or should I place them under the same directory path’s Visual Web Developer folder? 

I have not had any luck with VS 2005 recognizing this template. Thanks so much for any info…

The Solution

For the installing the Visual Studio template, all you need to do is put the gadgetTemplate.zip in the following folder 'My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates' and it should work. Here is the Screen-shot



Once you put the zip file there , Open Visual Studio 2005 and click on File -> New Website and you will see the template in My Templates section. See the screen shot below


The User Reply

I didn’t notice that the language, by default on the “New Web Site” came up “Visual Basic”. Once I set it to “Visual C#”, the template appears. That’s funny since. I don’t even have Visual Basic installed, but all is well now. Thanks for the help


So if you are also trying to use the template you know (now) what kind of issues are there. Take care.

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# posted by Rajesh Lal @ 3:37 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Friday, January 2, 2009

 

SOAP based Web Service in Vista Sidebar Gadget

I got the following email the other day from a fellow gadget developer, regarding a problem with a Gadget which access a SOAP based Web Service.

"I bought your book 'Creating Vista Gadgets' and congratulations... It’s a very good book since it gives both technical details and a broader view of the subjects on other areas which engineers usually forget about.
My aim is very simple… I wanted to migrate a small windows application to the vista gadget platform. It’s an astrological quality time meter using the Webservice http://webservices.plaintime.com/Service.asmx?wsdl. Since my knowledge of XML and Javascript is more google based I’m having problems understanding how to code it. Any help is welcome.

Although I could not help him directly, except for telling him that, 
  1. A SOAP based Web Service can be called inside a gadget similar to an rss feed. which is thoroughly covered in Chapter 5 - Chapter 8. Blog Gadget covers this topic in details. A webservice also return an XML file which then will be required to parse.
  2. Sending notes to refer Chapter 9, Information Gadget which uses a Text based Web Service for a Sidebar Gadget, to get some insight and 
  3. A link to an article which elaborates a usage of webservice http://www.codeproject.com/KB/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.aspx.
You wll be glad to know that he was finally able to use the Gadget Template in the book for the webservice and with his permission I am sharing his gadget with all of you. The gadget download page: http://www.maladilusoes.com/DLTL. Here is screenshot of the Gadget: Ontime – Astrology Time Management.


click to go the gadget download page

So, what kind of Vista Gadget are you creating ?

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# posted by Rajesh Lal @ 11:31 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Check out: The Best Windows Vista Tips and Tricks!