Windows 7 : Using Gadgets (part 2) - Adding a Gadget More Than Once, Changing Opacity of Gadgets, Removing Gadgets

Moving Gadgets Around

Gadgets are flexible and can be moved all around the screen. They can be dragged onto another monitor. To move gadgets:

Adding a Gadget More Than Once

There is nothing to prevent you from adding a gadget to the desktop more than once. Want a pile of notepads? Lots of slideshows running at the same time? A passel of stock tickers or news feeds all visible at once? No problem. Just add them, make the adjustments, and position them as you want.

If you deal with businesses or associates in multiple time zones, for example, it would be useful to have multiple clocks on your desktop, one for each time zone. Figure 7 shows an example. I named the clocks using the adjustment dialog box for each one.

Figure 7. Adding gadgets more than once is possible. Here I added four clocks set for different time zones.

Changing Opacity of Gadgets

When you right-click a gadget, the pop-up menu includes an Opacity option, which determines whether you can see through the object. This is a nifty feature, owing once again to the advanced video architecture of Windows 7. What do you do with a transparent gadget? Suppose, for example, that you don’t want to have to keep peeking at the desktop to see a clock but you don’t want that clock to completely obscure what is behind it, as shown in Figure 8. Here’s what you do:

Figure 8. Use the Opacity setting to create transparent or semitransparent gadgets, such as this clock.

Note that even though a gadget is transparent, moving the cursor over the gadget makes it opaque, and you cannot click something behind it. You’ll have to move the gadget first.

Removing Gadgets

Gadgets you install will remain active until you close them and will persist on subsequent reboots. Likewise, if you log off and log back on, they will be reloaded.

Gadgets you download will be added to your Desktop Gadget Gallery. They will live there until you right-click them and click Uninstall. This makes it easy to activate and deactivate gadgets and still have them readily available.

As mentioned earlier, you can close an individual gadget by hovering over it and then clicking the X when its tool handle pops up. But for a more comprehensive approach that, among other things, allows you to see all the currently running gadgets and quickly remove selected ones, do this:

1.	Click Start and type in gadgets. A series of gadget-related tasks appears.
2.	Click View List of Running Gadgets. You’ll see the View Gadgets dialog box, shown in Figure 9. Figure 9. Use the View Gadgets dialog box to see what gadgets are currently running and stop them if you want. Stopping a gadget does not uninstall it.
3.	Click the ones you want to stop running and click Remove. Close the box when you’re finished. Tip The default gadget location is C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets. Shared gadgets are located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar\Shared Gadgets.

Even after you remove a gadget, it’s not erased from your computer. It’s still in the list of available gadgets, and clicking the + (add) button at the top of the Sidebar will reveal it, if you want to use it later. You can safely remove gadgets without fearing that you’re obliterating them.

Installed gadgets do not appear in the Control Panel’s Programs applet, so you can’t remove them from your hard disk that way. You must right-click a gadget in the Desktop Gadget Gallery and choose Uninstall to remove it from your drive.