Active Desktop Gadgets

Long Live Windows XP!!!

Nice forum! I "still" use XP, not because I can't upgrade, but because I like it. I almost got a Dell Venue 8 Pro, but I considered storage capacity and Microsoft's respect for my privacy and got a Samsung Q1 Ultra instead.

I managed to get the channel bar (remember that?) working, and downloaded the only four active desktop gadgets in the archive of the old Gallery.

Windows doesn't know what to do with them.

How do I make them work?

 

if you tell me the name of the gadget, I will try to help.

 

I can't post a link yet, so look up active desktop on wikipedia and go to the bottom of the page. There is a link to an archive of the active desktop gallery from 2004. I'm interested in the weather and satelite tracking, but any of them should work. They don't. Windows asks what I want to open them with. If I try to add them from the desktop, it says it can't synchronize this type of URL.

These four appear to be the only active desktop gadgets left on the internet. If I can get this working, I would like to find the rest of Microsofts gadgets and any others. Does anyone know where?

 

.cdf files:

from here

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from here

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see if once active desktop is installed if they will work.

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https://www.google.com/#q=download+windows+xp+active+desktop+gadgets&spell=1

some desktop gadgets are here for download.

 

If .cdf files require a "player" from Wolfram Research (who?) then why were they available from Microsoft for the active desktop? Wolfram must have used the same extention for their player, but the page these files are on indicates these are for the Windows desktop.

The settings described for the "new desktop" don't apply to XP. Try them and see. I have already been to that page. I have also searched google, and the search result you posted contains no results for the active desktop used in Windows 95-XP. The term "active desktop" seems to be used somewhat loosely. Again, check the links you posted yourself.

 

I do not think that the .cdf file is the actual gadget. and the page is an archive page not necessarily a link to actual gadgets.

however if you want gadgets for xp, why not go here and see what they have to offer??

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http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html/
see above for satellite tracking

http://softpedia.ws/files/msn weather 2.0 gadget&id=my
msnbc weather gadget.

being that these were made for ie4, they will probably not work on ie8 and ie8 should not be used now, you should have firefox or chrome, for security reasons, .

 

After you identified one use of the .cdf extention, I dug a little deeper and found several others. In this case .cdf is "Channel Definition Format". Support for it was removed from ie7. Since I use Opera, I uninstalled ie8. Now the gadgets have an icon like the Windows Desktop icon, but when I tap it, ie6 still says it can't synchronize this type of url. I'll try reinstalling ie6, but is that possible?

Regarding other types of gadgets, thanks for the link - here's another: http://www.widgipedia.com - but I'm not doing this just to get gadgets. I have Desktop Sidebar, Yahoo Widget Engine, and Microsoft's "Secret" Desktop Sideshow. These .cdf gadgets were supposed to work with XP, and they don't. I want to know why.

 

even if you do not use ie8, it cannot be uninstalled as it is interwoven with other parts of the operating system,

so yes, install ie 6, and ie8, update and then just do not use them, have opera as the default browser.

this may be why they do not work but, it is a guess on my part. sorry,