IE11 Appears not to support gadgets. What are the alternatives ?

[urbanspaceman1]

It looks that way, doesn't it? I am not au-fait with the mechanics of the OS but if there is mitigating science behind it all then it would behove them to explain it; especially to a the sort of Gurus we have on this forum who can pronounce it all acceptable or not. Perhaps that is why they don't!

 

[Mooly]

Here's a thing: I'm finding that the gadgets are not appearing on about every other log-on and I can't even launch the gadget homepage either. Do a restart and they return. Strangely enough my sticky notes gadget works perfectly and always has done.

I experienced this just once too. I'm the only user and so have no login to perform, just a cold boot to fire things up.

My story so far with all this... as you know I use Acronis and I'm back with IE11. I was reading all the comments and issues over on the Microsoft tech forums and the youtube issue is an active complaint by many.

I reverted back to my IE10 image, did a reset of IE10 and then a reboot and installed IE11. I then reset IE11 before setting home pages etc. Apart from youtube issue (and the gadgets but the modified ones haven't misbehaved since) its all good up to now.

I wonder if there is a timeout value somewhere in the gadget files and that because these are now "non native" (or whatever the term is) files that if for whatever reason they don't load in a specified time they get passed over.

 

[Mooly]

I'm finding utube OK today. There was a Flash update yesterday to 11-9-900-152

Anyone else finding it OK ?

 

[urbanspaceman1]

Hi Mooly. Yes, it's running fine now. I still hate it, but it works properly at least.

 

[Mooly]

Interesting, thanks for confirming its OK.

 

[gregrocker]

Today gadgets stopped working altogether on one of the home PC's. Nothing could revive them, none of the gadget links reached via Start Search box would even open. I connected to uninstall IE11 in Windows Updates and after reboot they of course reappeared.

This was brought up in IE11 sessions at MVP Global Summit on MS campus at Redmond last week but was not of interest since it is solely at WIndows 7 issue and MS no longer seems to support their wildly popular OS which has 47% of the market, focusing only on the Windows 8 phone app which has barely struggled in a year from 6 to 8% of the market. They also have warned that gadgets are a security risk so think that millions of customers who love them should have somehow already stopped using them, and apparently want to assure it with IE11.

Therefore IE11 is a Windows 8 browser not suitable for MS's successful OS since it interferes with a popular customer feature that has no history of infection path that we've seen here at the HQ for WIn7.

 

[ThrashZone]

I'm surprised that Gadgets is the only breaking point Greg ?
I didn't like ie11 because of many other reasons. especially with this very site but not exclusively
ie11 is not any faster than ie10 nor does it render any websites any better,
About the only thing which was improved a bit was html 5 at youtube which I don't use much at all.

 

[urbanspaceman1]

I thought there were improved security features: I was about to go back to 10 until I read about them and decided to stay.

IE11 makes 39% of Web sites more secure by discouraging the use of vulnerable RC4 based cipher suites and increases security on 16% of Web sites by negotiating TLS 1.2, the most secure version of TLS.
Try out IE11 to experience more secure browsing that uses the latest industry standards. We look forward to hearing your feedback via Connect, to help us move the industry forward and continue to enhance the browser.

Hasnat Naveed and Ritika Kapadia
Program Managers in Windows and Internet Explorer

 

[Trantor]

Hi Jerry.

Download the zip folder at the bottom of this post and extract it, then double click the gadget to install it.

Downloaded, extracted, installed. No errors, no warnings, everything fine. But your gadgets won't appear.
What could be wrong?
(System is Win7 Enterprise 64 Bit SP1 with all patches)

 

[Bongo]

Hi Jerry.

Download the zip folder at the bottom of this post and extract it, then double click the gadget to install it.

Downloaded, extracted, installed. No errors, no warnings, everything fine. But your gadgets won't appear.
What could be wrong?
(System is Win7 Enterprise 64 Bit SP1 with all patches)

Welcome to the Seven Forums

I am not sure which gadgets did you try?

Jerry

 

[Trantor]

I am not sure which gadgets did you try?

Clock, CPU and Weather. All from your ZIP-File.
Meanwhile tested on a second Computer (also Win7 Ent. SP1, latest patches). Same behaviour.

Andreas

 

[gregrocker]

Did you have another bunch of Updates? I think they are intending to make sure IE11 will not support Gadgets and may be pushing through more Updates to assure this.

 

[Trantor]

No, nothing special. I just tried another 3rd party gadget. Deinstalling, reinstalling. No problems. Works as intended.

 

[Mooly]

Jumping in in the middle so apologies if I'm off base here.

Can you see the gadgets in the gadgets folder in programme files. Are they in the correct folder ? I have one for x86 and one for x64.

The gadgets I modified (the originals and changing true to false in the xml file) are working faultlessly.

 

[Trantor]

Can you see the gadgets in the gadgets folder in programme files. Are they in the correct folder ? I have one for x86 and one for x64.

Sorry, no I can't.
Neither in C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets
nor in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets
nor in C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets

Clueless...

 

[Mooly]

OK... so it looks like they haven't installed as they should for whatever reason.

Why don't you try my method of just altering the original gadgets and then copying them back to the original folder. The detailed instructions are in the link in post #35

 

[Trantor]

Solution found!

It's a language problem!
Open those clock.gadget, cpu.gadget, weather.gadget files with your preferred unzipping program, e.g. 7-Zip.
Rename the "en-US"-folder to your specific language code. In my case "de-DE".
Doubleclick on the edited *.gadget files will now install the gadgets into
C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets folder. Done.

 

[Mooly]

Excellent... so all sorted

 

[Trantor]

Why don't you try my method of just altering the original gadgets and then copying them back to the original folder. The detailed instructions are in the link in post #35

Yeah, I will try this, later. So I'll get a complete localized version of those gadgets.
That's more comfortable for my mother-in-law...

 

[Mooly]

Yes, when you paste them back and then go to the desktop and open the gadgets you will have two of everything you have modified. One is the original gadget untouched and one the modified. One will work and one won't. If you are adventurous, then when you have the gadget files to work with you can also modify the icon image perhaps putting a symbol or letter on it (using paint etc) and that differentiates it from the original so you can pick it out first time.