The Windows Sidebar is a feature first seen in Windows "Longhorn" and later present in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems developed by Microsoft. The Windows Sidebar was designed to provide users with up-to-date information at a glance. The Channel Bar included with the Windows Desktop Update, the MSN Dashboard, and the later Microsoft Sideshow application can be seen as precursors to the Windows Sidebar. * In pre reset Longhorn builds, Sidebar ran in explorer.exe, which caused massive memory leaks, thus in post reset it ran in it's own process, sidebar.exe.