Desktop Gadgets and Widgets to Assist Programmers

Question

Does the collective genius here know of any Sidebar Gadgets, or Dashboard Widgets that help developers do their work? Tasks like:

• The ability to quickly look up functions/methods
• Class descriptions
• Stackoverflow questions filtered by a specific group of tags

You name it.

I'm desperately looking for a reason to use Vista's Sidebar, and I would love to do so in a way that I create a more productive environment, and helps me in my day-to-day tasks.

Answer 1

One of the few that I actually use is Activity Tracker. I like (sometimes have-to) keep track of my time on various projects & support tasks -- I pealed this gadget off the sidebar and dropped it on my 2nd monitor in the corner -- now, an easy click and I'm off one task and onto the next -- the web interface even graphs the time/projects.

Would love to see some more useful gadgets for sure.

Answer 2

It's not a sidebar gadget, but I have used www.quickref.org in the past to quickly looking reference. I'm sure it would make a great gadget. Unfortunately I feel the same about the Vista Sidebar, there's no real good use for it at the moment, at least for me.

Answer 3

I like anything that lets me unobtrusively monitor the CPU usage. Often, for me that's simply Task Manager on a 2nd monitor or even minimized (with the activity in the system tray.)

And, (as Dad would warn) be careful about looking to use a tool just because you own it. Kind of like applying design patterns, paradigms, etc... :)

Answer 4

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