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Windows Gadget – gadget.xml

This is an example of how to create a gadgets XML Manifest. The structure is pretty simple to do, and a the Microsoft documentation can be found here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965879(VS.85).aspx). Note the below image comes from this link.

There are some required elements that need to be present to ensure that your manifest will validate, these are them:

• <name> Value displayed on the picker (Richard’s Test)
• <version> This is used when installing your gadget, if there is another gadget with the same name, the version will be compared to decide if the install should continue.
• <hosts> Container for the host elements.
  • <base> Provides the file type and API version of the gadget
    • “Type” Required – Expected HTML
    • “src” Required – entry point into the gadget
• <permissions> The expected value is Full.
• <platform> The platform the gadget requires to run
  • “MinPlatformVersion” Required – Expected value is 1.0
• <defaultImage> [Optional] Graphic that is displayed while the gadget is being dragged from the picker
  • “src” Required – Path to the image file

There are some additional elements that can be added to the manifest, they are:

• <namespace> Not used yet, but am assuming that this will allow multiple widgets to run of the same type, each with their own settings.
• <author> Information about you
  • “name” Required – your name
    • <info> More information
      • “url” a URL link to something about you
  • <logo> Wrapper for your logo
    • “src” The path to your logo
    • <copyright> You guesses it, this is the copyright message
    • <description> Displayed in the users gadget dialog box
    • <icon> Add an icon for your gadget
      • “Height” <int> Height of your image
      • “Width” <int> The width of your image
      • “src” Path to your image

That’s all there is to it, this is the source from my first gadget.xml file I created:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<gadget>
  <name>Richard Test</name>
  <version>1.0.0.0</version>
  <author name="Richard Niemand">
    <info url="http://www.rn.co.za/" text="Vist my site" />
	<logo src="images/logo.png"/>
  </author>
  <copyright>&#169; Richard Niemand.</copyright>
  <description>"HelloWorld" Sidebar gadget sample.</description>
  <icons>
      <icon height="64" width="64" src="images/logo.png"/>
  </icons>
  <hosts>
    <host name="sidebar">
      <base type="HTML" apiVersion="1.0.0" src="html/Gadget.html" />
      <permissions>Full</permissions>
      <platform minPlatformVersion="1.0" />
    </host>
  </hosts>
</gadget>

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