Metro Sidebar for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 with Live Tiles
Sidebar was a feature first introduced in Windows Vista. It featured Windows Gadgets for easy access of your favorite applications. Though the gadgets were popular, sidebar was not cherished by many people. Eventually it was dropped out in Windows 7 just keeping the gadgets floating on desktop. Later on Microsoft stopped support for gadgets and hence Windows 8 did not receive them at all.
In this article we will go through a sidebar app which presents things in a bit different style. Basically it is a metro styled sidebar and can be used on Windows 7 onwards. MetroSidebar is a freeware app which brings metro styled sidebar to windows.
Personally, I liked it a lot. The power features and launcher will benefit Windows 8 users. Once you setup the sidebar properly you do not have to pay much attention to it.
[alert-note]Basic Windows 8 Tricks You Must Try[/alert-note]Working with MetroSidebar
After installing the sidebar it can be triggered by same way in which you access the Charms bar. Take the mouse pointer to right bottom or top corner. The Charms bar will slide out and you can see a black shiny border behind it. Click on that to bring up the Metro sidebar. Well, this is the case when you keep the sidebar in auto hide mode else its present all the time. I have faced no confusion or conflict with Charms bar during my usage span.
The feature that caught my attention is that it is totally customizable. The color of the gadget tile did not match your wallpaper or is it looking awkward? nothing to worry, just change it to whatever you like.
You can also push down gadgets to other sidebar faces. The number and active face will be denoted by dots present at bottom. You can remove the gadget tile you do not want on sidebar. Gadgets like clock and launchers and weather do have their own settings.
Adding Gadget Tiles to Sidebar
There are not many gadgets to use at this point. Apart from the basic ones already provided, you can also download them from the online tab. The online download service is not ready yet and I hope it will be up and running soon. With Live Tile support there can be many useful gadgets in future.
Overall it is a beautiful sidebar and totally blends with Windows 8 UI as if it is an official feature. I have tested it on Windows 8.1 x64, there were no troubles of any sort. It consumed about 20 MB RAM, which is fair enough. You must definitely give it a try.
[button-green url=”http://metrosidebar.com/” target=”_blank” position=”left”] Download MetroSidebar [/button-green] [clear]
