The look of the Windows Vista Sidebar is a tiny drab, and there is no method to customize it with the default tools in Vista. Thankfully third party developers have stepped up to the plate and produced an application that will let you re-theme the sidebar.

Once you launch the Windows Sidebar Styler application, it will offer you these dialogs that offer you a list of all the elements in the theme. You can choose the items and observe a preview on the right.

The large Play button will apply the style, but first you will need to load it by clicking the button to the right for “Load a Windows Sidebar Style”, which will open up a file selection dialog so you can select from the different themes.

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There are a lot of themes that come with the application, or you can get other themes at the WinCustomize gallery.

You can select the option to create, resize your sidebar, if you click another button in the dialog box.

Once you select this option, you can resize the sidebar like any other window. You will observe a new option to “Lock” the sidebar, which will stop resizing once you have chosen the size that you want.

Another advantage to this tool is that you can load extra powerful gadgets utilizing Windows Presentation Framework (WPF).