Professional Windows Vista Gadgets Programming covers sidebar and sideshow gadget development each in their own part of the book. Part 1 will cover Sidebar gadgets while Part 2 covers SideShow gadgets. In each part, the book first explains the motivation behind each technology and its features.

Then, the reader is taken on a quick walkthrough of how to develop a simple gadget, using the traditional "Hello World" approach to quickly introduce the key concepts. After the quick walkthrough, subsequent chapters will then dive into each specific API that is relevant to enhancing the gadget.

Finally, when the reader has mastered all the important APIs, each part will end with a chapter covering two or more projects, detailing step-by-step how each is built.

Some of the specific topics covered include:

• Sidebar gadgets architecture and components including XML manifest
• Debugging gadgets in Visual Studio 2005
• Deploying gadgets
• The Gadget system APIs
• Localizing gadgets and sidebar security sidebar projects
• Sideshow devices, UI components, and SDK
• Sideshow architecture, managed code, and classes
• Sideshow simple content format (SCF)
• Interacting with sideshow devices and handling sideshow device events
• SideShow projects