i had a question about the sidebar in windows xp, it occured to me today when i opened up the network connections that i wondered how they did that. attached is a picture of what i mean. how is that done? also in the picture do you see the search button? how would that be accomplished? i tried putting a picture on a button but it still shows the layout. is it a picture box? thanks for telling me the underlying 'theory' of how this is done. btw what is the real term microsoft calls that?