If Silverlight 2 is Microsoft’s shining new addition to the family (and deservingly so) then gadgets, both Windows Vista Sidebar and web gadgets are the all but forgotten middle children. In this article I pose the question: Has Microsoft all …

You’ve heard me stress in the past the importance of writing good JavaScript, especially when it comes to the complex code that makeup a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget. You’ve also heard me preach that you should always lint your code…

OK, it’s formally called the Live Search Maps gadget, but that’s a mouthful so most people simply call it the "traffic gadget". The traffic gadget was taken off the market for a few months for "security reasons" (not unlike like …

Wrox is about to release a book by Jon Arking titled “Professional Windows Live Programming”. As a Microsoft MVP, I was fortunate to get a pre-release copy.

The book does a good job highlighting the many services that makeup Windows …

What is 1 in 3? Your odds of winning a one of 10 Zunes or 3 trips to Las Vegas in the Remix MIX contest. Right now there are about 35 entries in the Remix MIX Gallery. Of those, …

Calling all designers. Win one of 3 trips to MIX07 in Las Vegas in a prize package worth over $3000.  Just head over to http://www.visitmix.com/remix/contest/ to find out more and to download the REMIX zip file. 10 honorable mentions will …

I got a chance to meet up with the Vista Bus earlier this morning as it rolled through our nation’s capital. In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft took a sweet “rock star” bus, loaded with Vista laptops and set out on an 8 …

Microsoft’s Danny Thorpe talks about the new version of the Windows Live Contacts control that adds a new tile view that displays online presence (i.e. online, busy, etc) and initiate a messenger session. The hosting Web site can also pre-define a …

As regular readers of LiveSide.net know, I am Donavon West, a Microsoft MVP and I wrote the Windows Vista Countdown gadget. The other day, a friend sent me a link to a blog posting by Mitch Denny, a …

Developers often find the need to popup some kind of informational message to the user. We’ve all been on web sites and received the “Invalid input, please try again” alert, or the “Delete record. Are you sure?” confirmation dialog. But …