Vista sidebar is annoying

28 January, 2008

The Windows Vista sidebar has two display methods:

Always there – in the mode it blocks up a couple of inches at the right-hand edge of the screen and all your applications behave as though the sidebar is the edge of the screen.
sometimes there – when you bring it to the foreground it merges seamlessly with the background, with a good default opacity, highlighting gadgets as you roll over them and allowing the data in them to be visible at all times without being instrusive. However, when you click on an application, it will disappear.

Now guess which, with an amendment, I’d prefer.

The fact that there is no option for “always on top in opaque mode” is frustrating as hell.

Not only that but the default, laughable, “sticky notes” application is non-resizable so even if your sidebar is completely empty, it can still only be an inch or so high.

I can see masses of potential in the sidebar, but it’s just like they want me to hate it.

Comments

Gabe

29 January, 2008 at 02:20

The sidebar in vista is _useless_. The gadgets aren’t very good, the options for configuring it aren’t very good, and the “intrusive” nature of the darn thing is the straw that broke the etc. etc.

Mathew Peet

11 March, 2008 at 01:50

I had to turn off the sidebar on my colleagues computer, she wasn’t using it, and wasn’t looking at it, and could ignore it. I couldn’t even walk past without being annoyed by the random photo appearing and the big clock in the corner.

She didn’t add it back yet.

Hmmm, I added office 2003 to a vista machine today, and now it is complaining when word is opened. (I is a Sony Vaio and I think it expected people to use the pre-installed office 2007, use 1 month and then pay to access your documents).