Demo creating side bar by component designer

There is a great posting in the Notes 8 forum for developers. It explains (actually better than the help) on how to contribute components to the side bar. Check out the blog entry here->{ Link }
I also wrote how you can use activities to hide and show side shelf components automatically. You can, for instance, assign the activity to a component and whenever a perspective (screen or page) has that activity enabled the component will show, if the activity is not enabled then it hides. Check out that posting here->{ Link }