Other users may not have those reservations when it comes to Metro style designs and interfaces. Those users may even be interested in running copies of the metro UI on their current operating systems.

The free program Metro Sidebar does just that. While it is not a full Metro theme for Windows Vista or Windows 7, it adds the distinct metro style as a sidebar to the operating system. And I have to admit, it does not nearly as bad as I expected it to look.

The sidebar, which is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista, displays a setup menu on startup. The background color of the sidebar, the favorite web browser and autostart are configured here. The favorite web browser will be added as a link to the sidebar.

The sidebar is then displayed on the right side of the screen. It displays the data and time at the top followed by options for the current user to change the system state. Available for selection are to lock the system, log off, switch the user, restart or shut down the PC.

Users find information about the operating system and the main local hard drive on the sidebar. There does not seem to an option to change those settings. It would have been nice if users could add other hard drives or information to the display.

This results in a problem on systems that run large screen resolutions. Half the sidebar’s screen is empty on my system that is connected to a monitor with a 1920×1200 resolution. There is also no option to change the sidebar color if wallpapers are rotated on the system.

Users may also notice artifact generation sometimes when a window is moved on top of the sidebar. This gets resolved automatically on the other hand.

Windows users can download Metro Sidebar from the developer website.

Personally I like sidebars, but for some reason I don’t use them. I have a pretty wide screen and a system which has plenty of memory to eat, but to me the cleaner my screen, the less stuff I have to focus on, the better. I never really liked the Vista sidebar, it’s just too “big”, it looks a bit clunky sometimes, but there are some good widgets you can put in there, so it’s not all bad.

I pretty much like Google’s sidebar, and it also has some good widgets, the best feature is probably the integrated hard drive and email search, which really can be a savior sometimes. It also seems that there are better widgets for the Google Sidebar, but that might be just my perception. In my case I don’t really find the widgets so useful that I would need to see them permanently on a sidebar, what’s your take on all this, do you perhaps use another sidebar?

Many Windows Vista users like the Windows Sidebar, others feel that it is to restricted to one part of the screen. Microsoft has already announced that they will change that behavior in Windows 7 so that users can place gadgets wherever they want on the desktop.

It was only a matter of time until someone would port the Windows Vista Sidebar to Windows XP. Joshoon managed to port the real Windows Sidebar to Windows XP by making use of Alky For Applications. You might remember Alky from the time when Windows Vista came out. That was at the same time when Microsoft announced Vista only applications and Alky was supposed to make them compatible with Windows XP (like the games Shadowrun or Halo 2)

The pack includes three different applications that are needed to install, display and maintain the Windows Vista Sidebar in Windows XP. First there is Alky For Applications which can simply be installed. Once that is done the Windows Vista Sidebar can be installed and will be operational afterwards. The pack comes with many gadgets and a tool called Gadget Gallery which can be used to add new gadgets to the sidebar.

Already available gadgets can be added by right-clicking the sidebar and selecting a gadget from the list of installed gadgets. Each gadget can be added by right-clicking it and selecting Add from the context menu.

Even more interesting than this is the ability to download gadgets from the Windows Vista Gallery site over at Microsoft. It requires some manual work but it’s easily done and works perfectly fine. The gadget needs to be downloaded and unpacked. It comes with the .gadget extension but it can easily be unpacked by most unpackers. Worked fine with 7-zip.

The directory that will be created by unpacking the .gadget file, adding the .gadget extension to the root directory of it and moving it to the Shared Gadgets directory of the sidebar application.

One interesting feature is the ability to detach a gadget from the sidebar so that it can be moved freely around on the desktop.

The Sidebar requires roughly 20 Megabytes of computer memory when displaying the default three gadgets.

Both tweaks need to be applied to the file userChrome.css which is located in the Firefox profile folder. Just search for userChrome.css and you should find it right away. Double-click that file and add one or both of the following two tweaks to the end of the file.

To move the sidebar from the left to the right you do add this line:

#browser {-moz-box-direction: reverse;}

To increase the width of the sidebar you would add this one:

#sidebar {max-width: none !important; }

A restart of Firefox applies the new settings.

Have you ever asked yourself for instance why it is not possible to resize the Vista sidebar ? Microsoft creates additional layers if you fill the sidebar with to many applications which are only accessible if you click on the arrows that appear in that case. Not very user friendly in my opinion.

The Sidebar Styler lets you resize the sidebar at will, you can increase and decrease the width of it. This disables the page navigation however which means that you won’t be able to see all gadgets if you have a lot of them in the sidebar. Most users however won’t notice this at all.

Since this application is called Vista Sidebar Styler it is able to customize the appearance of the sidebar as well.

Custom styles allow for resizing and customizing the appearance of Windows Sidebar so that it fits other UI elements, such as the Aero Glass colorization or an actual third party theme.

download: Windows Vista Sidebar Styler
source: Cybernet News