3.4. Google Desktop Sidebar

Google sidebar is one of the major components of Google Desktop. Historically, Google desktop is the personal storage indexing technology enabling searching of local folders.

With version 2, Google has added the sidebar framework. The sidebar is a container of panels.

A Panel provides the latest information from a data source and can be further developed to get more detailed information

At the last level clicking on the item goes and opens the underlying resource.

They are two interfaces for writing panels:

·       For advanced graphical GUI panels, its based on C++ and ActiveX

·       For more simple panels, there is a JavaScript interface

This is an example of advanced GUI panel: an analog clock.

Google sidebar is well embedded with Google search. A small entry field allows entering a search which scans the various data sources to propose the more relevant elements taking into account time as one of the search parameter.