What Happened To Windows Desktop Gadgets And Why Did Microsoft Abandon Them?

UPDATE (07/05/12): This link all but confirms that Desktop Gadgets will go away as I anticipated in Windows 8: Microsoft reportedly killing off desktop gadget support in Windows 8

A quick opinion entry here post bowling night (Yes I do have other hobbies besides programming!). Anyways back on topic I was quite disappointed to see a Tweet come across a few days ago stating that Windows Gadgets were being retired and the Gallery hosting them was no more. What?!?! I actually have always been a big fan of those things. I mean as a developer that sits in front of a machine with multiple screens for 8+ hours a day, I like all the information those things provide me at quick glance. After all we are in the information overload age (i.e. Smartphones, tablets, computers, etc.) and the gadgets fit right in to that role. Desktop gadgets were 1st made popular on Macs, then Yahoo came out with their "Yahoo Widgets", and finally Windows got in the game to offer support natively in the OS beginning with Windows Vista. However the gallery has been retired and support has quickly shifted away. Here is the official Microsoft Link on the status of the retired gallery and discontinued support:

Looking for gadgets?

Here is an excerpt from the above link stating it all:

"The Windows Live Gallery has been retired. 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."

OK I get it. Microsoft is positioning itself for Windows 8 and its new design including a focus on 'Metro Style Apps'. Windows Gadgets don't fit at all into that new design and really hinder in some ways the competing and improved look of Windows 8. You need folks to forget about these little anchored desktop apps and focus on Metro Apps in Windows 8. This could not be as strong of a directive with these 'dead weight' mid 2000 type apps lingering around (not really my thoughts, but probably the view at a meeting at Microsoft when the decision came to retire these widgets). I had already noticed a lack of developer interest and I understand this as well. It's not the sexy thing to spend time on in present day. If you were about to sit down and create a little weather app, would you make a Desktop Gadget or a Windows Phone 7 app for the marketplace? Easy enough answer. But even the minimal support was welcomed and still created a huge portfolio of selectable and free fun, productive, entertaining, and cool apps to have on the desktop. However I think the decision to retire the gallery and discontinue support is a bit premature and let me explain why. It is not often I disagree with Microsoft because I live for the technology they pump out of Redmond, but I am not on the same page with them on this decision.

There was a time from say 1993ish to 2005ish where it was almost a necessity to buy a new computer every few years to keep the hardware up with what the applications could do. Even simple tasks like having a browser open and Microsoft Word could be dauntingly slow on an older machine. So what does one do? Buy a new computer so multitasking became a possibility and didn't drive the user nuts. Also during this time period, the cutting edge industry development and the hardware were not that far apart. Using a Windows 98 box with VB5, Access, C++, etc. and building the best apps (excluding gaming) using the latest technology didn't require any special hardware. Using a standard home PC would allow one to create, build, and deploy these types of apps.

Now we have gotten to a point where I think us in the development community and those in the R&D sector moving the ball forward may not realize the disconnect that is upon us. The cutting edge technology and its expectations in my opinion will not excite a large portion of the market share. Sometime around the mid 2000's, PC hardware began to outpace the software running on it for the 1st time which helped drive costs down on PCs and allowed the consumer to breath a bit and not have to rush out to get the new OS and machine. "Hey if I can run my browser, email my family, and write Word documents, I am set!" Not everyone is 16 years old and rushing out to get the newest piece of hardware that supports the cutting edge technology, which we were all forced to do in years passed. Microsoft could rely on the fact that users would continue to buy newer, faster, smaller PCs and along with that the newest OS too. It was a nice harmony because the software and hardware naturally moved together and everyone (users and developers) had to keep up with the same pace. You didn't find too many Windows 95 users in 2003, 8 years after it came out, but you can certainly find a large portion of home PCs (and businesses too) that are still running Windows XP 10 years after release. This is because that stable, easy to use, machine doesn't warrant being replaced. In current day Microsoft can no longer expect the average user is going to buy a new piece of hardware to support the newest OS; that hand is not naturally being forced as it once was 10-15 years ago. Therefore support of what may be deemed 'legacy' technology or software (even if it is only 5 years old) has to be taken into consideration to keep the masses happy.

So what in the heck does that background have to do with Desktop Gadgets going away you ask? Well, I think for starters a lot of late migrators to Windows Vista or Windows 7 will be disappointed when they buy the computer and see one of the 'neat' features, Gadgets, is retired even before some had a chance to use them. But more prevalent than worrying about people who are behind in technology (hey you snooze you don't get to experience it like those of us that bought it on time, Ha!), is I wonder if Microsoft is going a little hard to place all their eggs in 1 basket with Windows 8. I don't think the masses will move quickly but this is not apparent by those of us in the technical community. We will all have it as soon as it is released to Beta and installed on Day 1. But that is a bad impression for the general use market share. I don't think everyone is going to abandon their PC for a tablet running Windows 8. And don't get me wrong; I don't think Microsoft is thinking this will happen either, but I do think some feel this is what "Everyone will be doing in 5 years..." I am not so convinced. I will be all over Windows 8 because of what I do and how much I like the technology, but I am not sure about Sister, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Friend 1, and Friend 2.

So I liken retiring the Windows Gadgets the start of Microsoft's reposition for its new OS, and is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope Microsoft doesn't continue to make decisions like this to slowly force people into buying Windows 8 because their nice, stable, Windows 7, Vista, or XP machine has 20% of its features retired or not supported. It's an aggressive stance and I get the feeling from the Build conference that Microsoft will be pursuing Windows 8 harder than any OS since maybe Windows 95. I just hope it does not come back to haunt Microsoft by leaving a bad taste in people's mouth by being unwillingly shuffled along faster than they care to. It's a fine line to walk.

This isn't the only instance were they suttly or explicitly phased out technology. For example, VS.NET 2010 will not support Windows CE development. Hold the horses!! I don't recommend making new CE apps at this point in time, but I have 1st hand experience working on a current 3rd party product that uses a propriatary device runnign on Windows CE. Makes total sense why Microsoft would not support CE development in VS.NET 2010: DO WP7 DEVELOPEMENT! But once again it's these decisions that I think don't agree with the masses as evident by the feedback from this Microsoft Connect entry:

No support for Windows CE and Compact Framework development in VS2010

So maybe a bit profound for the analyzation of why the Desktop Gadets went away, but I think there is a bigger picture here. And yes personally I am disappointed and don't think it would have slowed down Windows 8's new sexy features too much. You can still search the net for the individual gadgets if you are looking for a particular one, but they are already difficult to find so zip them up and save off the .gadget files on your machine. It will not matter beyond Windows 7 though because they will not be supported in Windows 8, so enjoy them on your already out-of-date Windows 7 PC (a little tongue-and-cheek there obviously). Or you can still use Yahoo Widgets which you can check out here, and they have a massive widget library:

Yahoo! Widgets

Well the nice thing about this blog is hopefully I can come back in a few years and maybe 'eat crow' showing I was all wrong. But for the time being I am disappointed to see the desktop widgets essentially discontinued, and I feel Microsoft may have missed the bulls-eye a bit on this decision.

Anyone reading this feel free to post links to websites, SkyDrive locations etc, to share .gadget files if you wish.

How To: Create A Thumbnail Image From A Video Using The Microsoft Expression Encoder SDK

In the modern day of the web, video players of all sorts of technology are being used from Flash, Windows Media Player, Silverlight, HTML, and many more. Commonly we will use a preview image (like seen on YouTube for example) to give a still image of what the video visually represents. You can accomplish the creation of this video thumbnail dynamically in .NET using the Expression Encoder SDK.

The idea is to load a video into a 'AudioVideoFile' object and then create a still image file based on a provided interval within the video. This gives managing video thumbnails a hands-off approach to creation saving a lot of time as opposed to someone needing to manually create this file from the Encoder product directly. Using the right naming convention, once created you could just load the thumbnail into your video player automatically without ever needing to touch the video.

To being you need to install Microsoft Expression Encoder and applicable service packs. As of this post the current version is Expression Encoder 4 SP2. The Expression Encoder 4 SDK and the documents are installed with the application. You can access the SDK from the Start menu by clicking All Programs and then clicking Microsoft Expression. The links below have the installations needed:

Microsoft Expression Encoder 4

Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 SP2

This method of creating a thumbnail is best suited for a WCF service or directly within a ASP.NET web application because of the required Encoder components. It must be installed on each server or machine where the code is ran. Therefore unless you have a limited user base, this may not work well within a WinForms or WPF application. In this case porting the functionality to a WCF service and having the remote applications call it to create the thumbnail would work best. This reduces the locations where the components need installed.

An interesting fact is you need the full version of Expression Encoder installed on the machine or server that has the code to generate the thumbnails, but you never actually need to open or use the Encoder product itself. In the past, I did have success installing a trial version of Encoder and having the code continue to run successfully with the SDK, but you will need to confirm or deny this independently. The SDK alone is not enough to allow the code to work; it relies on the Expression Encoder product being installed. For the purposes of this code here, you never actually have to open Expression Encoder.

After you have Expression Encoder, any current service packs, and the SDK installed you are ready to being. I recommend just making a little test harness in a web app or WPF app locally to see how it works. Then you can port it out to a service or in an actually application.

To being add the following references to your application from the following location (assuming you are using the Expression Encoder 4 SDK) "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Encoder 4\SDK\":

Now add the following 'Imports' or 'using' statements to your code:

Imports System.IO
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Drawing.Imaging
Imports Microsoft.Expression.Encoder

Next let's make a method named 'GenerateVideoThumbnailImage' that takes some input parameters about the location of the video, the size of the thumbnail to generate, and the path to save the generated thumbnail image. The code below shows using the Expression Encoder SDK to generate the thumbnail:

Private Sub CreateVideoThumnailImage(ByVal VideoPath As String,
                                     ByVal SecondIntervalForThumbCapture As Integer,
                                     ByVal ThumbnailWidth As Integer,
                                     ByVal ThumbnailHeight As Integer,
                                     ByVal ThumbnailSavePath As String)

 'Create the AudioVideoFile object which stems from the Expression Encoder SDK .dlls
 Dim avFile As New AudioVideoFile(VideoPath)

 'Create a value equal to the length of the video
 Dim FileDuration As Double = avFile.Duration.TotalSeconds
 'Set thumbnail value to second interval indicated by argument passed in:
 Dim ThumbnailLocation As Double = SecondIntervalForThumbCapture

 'If the interval passed in is at a location longer than the video, then redefine an interval to the mid-point of the video. 
 If ThumbnailLocation > FileDuration Then
    ThumbnailLocation = (FileDuration / 2)
 End If

 'Create the formatted filename to append on to the VideoFile (Format = "VideoFileName_thumb.png")
 'Note: You can change this logic to be a passed in value or whatever you would like. This is not critical to generating the thumbnail image.
 Dim FormattedFileName As String = Path.GetFileName(VideoPath)
 'Strip off the video file extension and add an "_thumb" and the format extension (.Png will be used) to be saved to.
 FormattedFileName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(FormattedFileName)       
 FormattedFileName += "_thumb." & ImageFormat.Png.ToString().ToLower()

 'Create ThumbnailGenerator object to get thumbs from AudioVideoFile. Use the Width and Height arguments passed in to determine the size to Save.
 Dim ThumbnailImageGenerator As Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.ThumbnailGenerator = avFile.CreateThumbnailGenerator(New System.Drawing.Size(ThumbnailWidth, ThumbnailHeight))
 'Create the thumbnail image based on interval set above
 Dim ThumbnailImage As Bitmap = ThumbnailImageGenerator.CreateThumbnail(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(ThumbnailLocation))
 'Save the file to the ThumbnailSavePath argument passed in with the formatted file name (above) added:
 ThumbnailImage.Save(ThumbnailSavePath & FormattedFileName, ImageFormat.Png)

 'Clean up
 ThumbnailImage.Dispose()
 ThumbnailImageGenerator.Dispose()

End Sub

Here is a sample call to the above method that will output "MyVideo_thumb.png":

'Make a call to generate a thumbnail of the video at the '10' second interval (size will be 150x150) and save it to the same directory:
CreateVideoThumnailImage("C:\Videos\MyVideo.wmv", 10, 150, 150, "C:\Videos\")

Previously I have used the 'MediaItem' object and its 'GetThumbnail' method within the SDK to generate the thumbnail. I had success using this on Windows Server 2003 and the Encoder 2 SDK, but could *never* get it to work on Windows Server 2008 with either the Encoder 2 or Encoder 4 SDK. It works so long as the code is directly run within your application, but if you try to port it out to a service (i.e. WCF) regardless of the hosting type (IIS or Windows Service) and regardless of the user context (Administrator), the service would always throw the following exception:

"Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.InvalidMediaFileException: File type isn't supported. ---> Microsoft.Expression.Encoder.UnableToAnalyzeFileException: Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040218"

I had a lengthy MSDN post that was never resolved and can be read about here, but my strong recommendation is to port any use of the 'MediaItem' object over to using a 'AudioVideoFile' object. There seemed to be some underlying caching of credentials or some other oddity with trying to load the video file into the MediaItem constructor that I could never get to work properly. However with the code above, I can successfully implement it in a WCF service hosted by IIS or as a Windows Service. Just make sure to run the app pool hosting the IIS site or Windows Service under the LocalSystem or other Administrator account to make sure the service has the proper permissions.

Lastly, you may run into issues if you try and generate a thumbnail image from a video in which your machine does not have the codec installed. For information on this, please see one of my older posts that is listed below:

Fixing the "File type isn't supported" Error When Working With Expression Encoder SDK