Thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring the Gadget versus Gadget contest.

Version 3.0 is now available. This version supports recent changes made by TV Ontario. Prior versions of the gadget will no longer play The Agenda videos. Make sure to upgrade to V3.0 and you'll be able to continue to watch The Agenda from your gadget bar.

Overview

What is The Agenda?

The Agenda with Steve Paikin is TVOntario's (TVO) flagship current affairs program and is hosted by Steve Paikin. Typically, the show is divided into two segments: the first is a one on one interview, and the second is a debate between a panel of anywhere from four to eight people.

Much of The Agenda is available on demand through a variety of technologies like video and audio podcasts, blogs, and streaming video. The Agenda also practices what is known as citizen journalism - viewers are encouraged to send video, audio or written content to The Agenda site. In fact, Thursday evenings are reserved for what is called Your Agenda where viewers decide the topics for the show.

What is The Agenda Gadget?

I guess we should first answer what a Vista Gadget is? Gadgets are easy-to-use mini programs designed to run on the Vista Sidebar. Vista Sidebar is a pane on the side of the desktop where gadgets are organized. If you are interested in learning more about Vista Gadget, please refer to the Microsoft website.

The Agenda Gadget is a Vista Sidebar Gadget that displays the currently available Agenda videos from which the user can conveniently watch them. To view a specific video, the user selects the video and then the video is played in a flyout window next to the gadget. Here the gadget is shown playing a video.

Installation

Prerequisites

In order to run The Agenda Gadget you will require:

Please install Adobe Flash Player prior to installing The Agenda Gadget. Rebooting Vista may be required for proper video playback.

If you experience problems playing Agenda videos from the gadget you may need to Allow Blocked Content from The Agenda website. Start IE and navigate to The Agenda site and select one of the stream videos links. If the video in the popup window does not play check the top of the window and if required select Allow Blocked Content. If it still does not work then you can try Internet Options->Advanced->Security and enable the option Allow active content to run in files on My Computer.

Download

Before downloading and installing The Agenda Gadget please ensure that you have installed the Adobe Flash Player.

Download The Agenda Gadget Here

After downloading, extract the file, TheAgenda.gadget, to some location on your Vista file system.

Windows Live Gallery

The TVO Agenda Gadget is also available for download from Windows Live Gallery.

The Agenda - Podcasts

The TVO Agenda site is now hosting a link from which the user is redirected to The Agenda Gadget on Windows Live Gallery. To download The Agenda Gadget please visit The Agenda Podcast site and select The Agenda Gadget image.

How to install The Agenda Gadget

To install The Agenda Gadget simply double click the TheAgenda.gadget file. This will install the gadget on the Vista Sidebar.

Instructions

Using The Agenda Gadget

Provided Flash is installed and there are no connectivity problems, The Agenda Gadget will appear as is shown in the figure to the left. The main part of the gadget consists of a scrollable region which contains a list of links to specific Agenda videos. Above the scrollable region is The Agenda logo and when selected will start the browser at The Agenda web site. Next to the logo is a photo of Steve Paikin, the host of the program. At the bottom of the gadget are three icons; the RSS, Live Search and Help icons. When selected, the RSS icon will re-load the video links. This is useful when the RSS feed has been updated recently and you want to get the latest list of videos. The Live Search icon will bring up a window from which you can search The Agenda website. Finally, the Help icon brings up the help window.

To start a video just select one the links in the scrollable region.

The Agenda Gadget will not display video links unless the Adobe Flash Player has been installed. Instead, the Download Flash link is displayed as is shown in the figure to the left. Selecting this link will start the browser at the Adobe Flash download site from which you can install Flash. After the installation is complete you can select the RSS icon located at the bottom left hand corner of The Agenda Gadget. This will cause The Agenda video links to be retrieved and displayed in the gadget scrollable region.

The Agenda Gadget will attempt to retrieve The Agenda RSS feed 5 times, pausing for 5 seconds between each attempt. If it is unsuccessful a message is displayed in the gadget as shown in the figure to the left. If this happens check your network connection. After correcting any network issues you can start the loading of the RSS feed by selecting the RSS icon located at the lower left hand corner of the gadget. If there is nothing wrong with your network connection then check The Agenda RSS feed. If the site is down then try again at a later time.

Changing Options.

Selecting the settings icon (located to at the top right of the gadget and appears as a wrench) causes the a dialog window to appear. There are two settings you are allowed to change; diagnostics and refresh rate. The diagnostics setting is useful if you plan to make changes to The Agenda Gadget code. Enabling Diagnostics will output information to System.Debug.outputString. To view this output use a tool such as DebugView. By default the RSS feed is not refreshed periodically. If you want periodical refreshes, then set the refresh rate to either 12 or 24 hours. With this setting the video links will automatically be updated.

Search the Agenda Using Windows Live Search

The Live Search window is started by selecting the Live Search icon located at the bottom of the gadget. This window is shown below and can be used to search for additional information. The first tab contains search results from the Agenda site, whereas, the second contains search results from the web.

Tool Tips

Hovering the mouse over links displays additonal information. For example, hovering the mouse over a link in the scrollable region will give more details on the video.

Modifying the Code

The Source Code

You are free to modify the Agenda Gadget as you see fit. The source code is contained in gadget file itself. To get access to it all you need to do is rename the file from TheAgenda.gadget to TheAgenda.zip and then extract the contents of TheAgenda.zip file. The source consists of a number of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and image files.

Development Tools

You can use a simple text editor to modify the code. However, Microsoft makes available a free tool called Visual Web Developer. In addition to this tool you should download DebugView from SysInternals. You can get these tools from;

An example of the messages written to the DebugView window is shown below. Remember to set the Diagnostics setting in the Options Dialog.

Development Resources

You may find the following development resources valuable:

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank TVO for allowing me to use images from their website.In particular, thanks to Rick Nye, Producer of Interactive and Digital Media, for his help.

About the Author

My name is Tony Cavaliere. I'm a .NET developer and a self proclaimed Agenda Junkie. Please visit my home page