The Sidebar before Longhorn: Microsoft Sideshow PDC 2001

[giantsteen]

At this time PDC 2001, Microsoft was invisioning Longhorn. One distinct aspect of Longhorn (and soon to be Vista) were it's features which made it unlike any other Windows OS. One of them was the sidebar. The sidebar was not called it at first, but called "Sideshow." Giving you up to date tiles or widgets on the side of your screen make it easier to know what is going on without annoying you.

Sidebar originated in a Microsoft Research project called Sideshow (not to be confused with Windows SideShow.) It was developed in the summer of 2000, and was used internally at Microsoft.[2] It had many similarities to current desktop gadget software, including a clock, traffic reports, and IM integration.

The Sidebar appeared in "Longhorn" (Windows Vista) builds as early as September 2002, and was originally intended to replace the notification area or Quick Launch toolbar in Windows, but these plans were scrapped after the Longhorn "reset" in mid-2004.[3]

The Windows Sidebar was rebuilt for and began to appear in Windows Vista builds in the second half of 2005. Some reviewers and Macintosh enthusiasts have pointed out the Sidebar's similarities in form and function to Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widget Engine), which appeared several years previously, and the Dashboard widget engine first included with Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X v10.4, which had been released a few months earlier.

In Windows 7, Windows Sidebar was renamed Windows Desktop Gadgets, and the sidebar itself is not present.

As of Q4 of 2011, Microsoft retired the Windows Live Widget Gallery stating: "In order to focus support on the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows, Microsoft is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets." [4]

Rick Rashid, the head of the Microsoft Research branch, demonstrates the usage of "Sideshow" on Windows XP, though it does show the program working on Legacy OS's, most likely Windows 2000. The video (I have provided) below.











One build of "Sideshow" was leaked. It is unknown what platforms it works on, but it brings the sidebar to XP, and probably Windows 2000.

http://download.softpedia.ro/dl/f0e401c ... iNBETA.exe

[Arrum]

Very Interesting! Thank you for posting this.

[giantsteen]

Very Interesting! Thank you for posting this.

Your welcome! I hope someone has a machine or VM they are willing to try it on

[Someguy2]

Hmm, Interesting.

[giantsteen]

Just in case no one noticed, a build DID leak a long time ago. It seemed to have been just "lost" because it was unknown, but here it is:

One build of "Sideshow" was leaked. It is unknown what platforms it works on, but it brings the sidebar to XP, and probably Windows 2000.

http://download.softpedia.ro/dl/f0e401c ... iNBETA.exe

[Someguy2]

Just in case no one noticed, a build DID leak a long time ago. It seemed to have been just "lost" because it was unknown, but here it is:

One build of "Sideshow" was leaked. It is unknown what platforms it works on, but it brings the sidebar to XP, and probably Windows 2000.

http://download.softpedia.ro/dl/f0e401c ... iNBETA.exe

Upload it to the FTP please?

[linuxlove]

Confirmed working on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, though I can't get any of the Tickets to install.

[giantsteen]

I think it may require Office 2000? or Office XP? I'm not sure.

Edit: Let me know if anything here helps: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs ... x?id=69878

Edit 2: And remember Linuxlove, this app came out WAY before SP4 so in order for it to probably work it has to have whatever service pack was avaliable around 2001-2002

[Someguy2]

It also works on Whistler:


Seems worthless to use but it's also a treasure to the Beta community.

[giantsteen]

Then I guess we'll have to just figure out its dependencies then. Like I said, you may need to have office and .net framework to be installed.

[Emir214]

I remember using this a few years back. You need a patch to get the tickets working. I still have to find it though.

This thread contains pictures showing a fully-working Sideshow.

EDIT: Here is a link to the patch, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

EDIT 2: If the patch does not work, open Command Prompt, run as administrator and input the following code:

Code: Select all

cd %programfiles%\sideshow
regsvr32 /s atl.dll
regsvr32 /s sdshebay.dll
regsvr32 /s weather.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHAmazon.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHDesktopFavorites.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHFolder.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHMSNIM.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHOutlook.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHOutlookFolder.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHOutlookTask.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHStockQuote.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHWSDOT.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHRaid.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHPerson.dll
regsvr32 /s SDSHWebContent.dll
regsvr32 /s VSSDSHRaid.dll
regsvr32 /s sideshowhost.dll
regsvr32 /s sideshowcore.dll
regsvr32 /s sideshowmapi.dll

EDIT 3: And here's a screenshot of Sideshow in action (on Windows 7). Start Menu on a sidebar...looks familiar, doesn't it?


Many of the tickets are broken just as I remember it, such as Weather, Ebay, Stock Quote, Messenger Buddy Viewer and Person (one Messenger contact). The Seattle WSDOT Road Camera, which used to work back in 2009, no longer works as well.

The real challenge now would be able to make more tickets (the question I raised on the topic linked on the start of this post) or fix the broken ones.

EDIT4: You may need Outlook 2002/XP to use the Outlook tickets. I'm not sure though. Also, by tiles, in the context of Sideshow, I mean tickets. Sorry for the confusion. (I've changed all mentions of "tiles" to "tickets" in this post as well.

[Pwned]

This is more like Longhorn Sidebar, though.

[hogsy]

Really interesting, I'd probably use it if it was working

[Emir214]

This is more like Longhorn Sidebar, though.

It is a prototype of the Longhorn Sidebar.

Really interesting, I'd probably use it if it was working

Well, if new tickets are made or the existing ones are fixed, why not?

Which reminds me, if you check the Sideshow folder in My Documents, you'll find some tickets not available in the New Ticket window. (These may be custom non-Microsoft tickets. Again, I am not sure.) An example is the Traffic ticket.


Open it in Notepad. You should see this.


Copy content from <HTML> to </HTML> tag. Click New on the bottom of Sideshow. Select Web Content ticket.


Remove code from the Ticket HTML field and paste the code from Notepad. Name the ticket "Traffic" (or any name that you like).


Result:


Anyway, the Seattle WDOT Road Camera no longer works maybe because the cameras have been shut down.

[cassiodoroVicinetti]

Is that the beta that leaked in 2002 on WinBeta? (also Neowin)

[Emir214]

Is that the beta that leaked in 2002 on WinBeta? (also Neowin)

Yes it is.

[giantsteen]

I'm surprised it has the old Windows logo. I wonder if it is anywhere related to the Windows 98 FE sidebar...

[DeFacto]

I wonder if it is anywhere related to the Windows 98 FE sidebar...

That was just an active desktop background. This is a program. Big difference.

[giantsteen]

But it's made out of HTML...which makes it REALLY interesting. It's nothing like Longhorn's sidebar.

[linuxlove]

But it's made out of HTML...which makes it REALLY interesting. It's nothing like Longhorn's sidebar.

Rather, JavaScript. That's what it looks like anyway.

[giantsteen]

But it's made out of HTML...which makes it REALLY interesting. It's nothing like Longhorn's sidebar.

Rather, JavaScript. That's what it looks like anyway.

Ahh ok. Anyways, I am going to assume it works best on a clean copy of Windows XP SP0 because this was filmed on the day of the XP launch. If it's safe to say it works on Windows 2000, does it work on 95, 98, NT 4, or ME? They were all supported at the time, but then again the campaign of PDC 2001 was to drop DOS and 9x all together, which is what Bill Gates did.

[WinPC]

How does this relate to the sidebar seen in Longhorn Build 3683? Does it use mostly the same code, or is the actual coding different?

And yes, I did notice that this apparently uses JavaScript, unlike at least some versions of the Longhorn sidebar, but what I'm really asking is whether all versions of the sidebar in the widely available Longhorn builds use the different code, or just the later ones.

[spunker88]

It even works on Windows 7, kind of pointless since it has the real sidebar.

On NT4 it installs fine but gives the error "The procedure entry point MonitorFromWindow could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.dll".

[giantsteen]

It even works on Windows 7, kind of pointless since it has the real sidebar.

On NT4 it installs fine but gives the error "The procedure entry point MonitorFromWindow could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.dll".

Ok that sounds like an incompatibility error. It should at least work on Windows ME though.

[spunker88]

Works great on 98SE, but it could be because I have KernelEX installed. Windows 95 complained of some missing DLL files, which I copied from 98SE. But then it got the same error as NT4.

EDIT: Microsoft says MonitorFromWindow is supported only in 2000 and newer so it must be KernelEX that allows it to run on 98SE.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx