Vista sidebar widget available for WoW players
by Michael Gray 
Mar 24th 2009 at 11:00AM
If you're a Vista user, that odd sidebar has suddenly become relevant to your WoW lifestyle. Available for free from the Wndows Live site, WoW Explorer has a host of neat little plugins. The simplest of these features include the ability to put your realm on the Explorer skin -- you'll instantly be able to see if your realm is up or down, or what its population is like right now. You can also select your Explorer's theme, size, and toggle its docking behavior.The Explorer's neatest feature, however, is the search functionality. The plugin lives on your Vista sidebar, which gives you instant search from your desktop. You can choose which popular site is the Explorer's default (such as your intrepid WoW Insider or maybe Wowhead), and the results instantly return in a flyout window. I ran several different searches, such as looking for Dual Specs or some different fat loot, and found the widget to be incredibly fast and responsive.
You can't beat the price at "free." Since I'm one of the masses who had previously stared at the sidebar wondering if the dang thing would have any use, it's nice to see something WoW-related live over my local weather widget.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
SeiferTim Mar 24th 2009 11:04AM
...wait, people don't just turn that stupid thing off as soon as load Vista for the first time?
gundamxzero Mar 24th 2009 11:13AM
^^^
This
Naix Mar 24th 2009 11:16AM
^^
This
Aigarius Mar 24th 2009 11:31AM
Yep, right after they realize how little of Desktop they actually see during everyday use. Desktop applets were all the rage in free software community 3-4 years ago, now it is mostly gone. Apple version, where the applets are on a separate layer called up by a special hotkey is a reasonable option, but desktop applets are just useless.
Chuddy Mar 24th 2009 12:08PM
I'm not so sure if I agree with the how little of a desktop I use. Anyone whose been using windows since 95 has been using the desktop as a means to get to the information within. I dont mind the mac applet pulled up by a single key press, I find it something inherently "mac". There's something that appeals to anyone and works for them. I see wild shit pulled all day by the people I work with. What's funny is that Aigarius comes to wowinsider and touts "free software" and the community around it and then turns around and posts his fanboi responses to anything mac. Mac couldn't be less friendly to the freeware community if they tried. Sure I'll use my digi 003 with ONLY pro-tools. People love having everything handed to them and mac does it quite well. I truely believe that it's great that mac has so many app's built in that let "normal" people do things that were a little harder to figure out how to get a on a pc. But it's also breeding this type of person who doesn't know anything that's going on in the background. Sure you can produce a movie but do you even have the slightest idea on what codec you should be outputting with or it's size? I laugh at the 1 minute quicktime's that are 15 gigs encoded to be your natural resolution for your 22inc monitor but the playback is in a player that is 320x240. See that shit all the time on youtube and warcraft movies. oh Well. I'm sure some new people will figure out what's what that wouldnt normally and that's a good thing.
whew.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Mar 24th 2009 2:02PM
Turned it off - it was annoying.
Wyred Mar 25th 2009 8:02AM
Wait a minute, people load Vista?
Tumleren Mar 24th 2009 11:11AM
And of course - It doesn't work with EU servers
chris Mar 24th 2009 11:13AM
Lol. Go Microsoft. Apple has has an OS X widget for server status for almost exactly 3 years now...
Hoggersbud Mar 24th 2009 12:10PM
And there have been various server status monitors for WOW on Windows since WOW came out.
Don't confuse "Hey, look at this neat new program here" with "OMG, I think this has never existed before, it's totally brand new" .
Especially since this has nothing to do with Microsoft, other than being on one of their websites where they host third-party creations.
But hey, don't let reality stop you!
gundamxzero Mar 24th 2009 11:14AM
It has nothing to do with microsoft.
ShineyBlueShoes Mar 24th 2009 11:17AM
Hmm, I like it but I don't see how useful it'll be other then during scheduled down times.
Korbn Mar 24th 2009 11:20AM
neat but utterly useless for anyone but US gamers....sigh
Raaj Mar 24th 2009 11:36AM
It's utterly useless, period. How often does your server go down or hit the population cap? Sure, it happened the first month or so of Wrath, but those days are behind us.
Besides, you're going to open WoW anyway to get in the queue if you're on an overpopulated server. What's the point?
Deplane Mar 24th 2009 11:26AM
I like it! Really fast results and I like how it has the armory search too. Very cool!
Lianne Mar 24th 2009 11:28AM
Sweet! I've been looking for something like this...the other realm status gadget doesn't work. -_-
Alan Mar 24th 2009 11:36AM
Isn't there another gadget for realm status that has been around for a couple years? It looked like a big orb inside an elite picture frame.
BuildAGadget Mar 24th 2009 5:17PM
Slaine's World of Warcraft Realm Status Gadget: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=796a83b7-8183-4a5c-9343-c2c769c74454&bt=1&pl=1
But it hasn't been updated in a long while.
Kizzik Mar 24th 2009 11:38AM
It may seem a bit lazy but this little do-dad has won my heart simply because it frees up my time (which I have tons of and now have even more of). I no longer have to get online dig through all my bookmarked pages and dig up the realm status for each realm I play. This is deffinetly the lazy WoW players best friend.
Arktic Mar 24th 2009 11:53AM
Try renaming the .gadget file to .zip, then open it up, find the graphic layers, and recolor them in a graphic program. Name it back to .gadget and reinstall the app.
If you do a bit of reading about basic computer programing on the net (java perhaps), you could probably figure a way to customize other aspects of it, but I only know how to change the graphics so far.