Hey, I am trying to make a program that minimises any program to the system tray instead of normally minimising it. Is this possible? I have been looking around on google but cant find anything.
Icons in the system tray are called "Notification Icons".
To do this to your own application, If your using WinForms you can use the NotifyIcon class to display icons in the system tray. Then all you have to do it set the window to not be displayed in the task bar.
If you're using WPF there isn't a replacement, you still have to use the old WinForms NotifyIcon class, check out this MSDN sample for more information on this.
If you want to hide another app, what you need to do is use API calls to make the changes to the state of the applications window.
You can use FindWindow to get a handle to the window you want to hide, then you can use GetWindowLong to get the windows state. Then you need to remove the WS_EX_APPWINDOW flag from the state and use the SetWindowLong method to apply the new style, this will remove it from the task bar. You can then use the Get/SetWindowState methods to find out the state of the window and hide/minimise it.
You still just need to use the NotifyIcon class to display your own icon in the systray.
Good luck with all of that. It's not something I've tried personally, but I've used all these method calls in other ways. If you haven't done API stuff from C# before you might find you need to do a bit of googling to figure out your DllImports for the version API methods. Shouldn't be anything too hard though.
Crazyd22 has found a codeproject article that uses a slightly different set of API methods but achieves pretty much the same effect. (See comments below.)
Related
I want to make a menubar like window taskbar in C# but I'm wondering how can I make the form stay on the top of the screen and other program will not taped over it just like the window taskbar and when the mouse hover on a icon it will show a form like this:
I have made it like this:
And This is what I want
Windows has a facility for this, allowing you to basically create pseudo-taskbars that dock to the side of the screen and are always visible. It was used by the Office team (possibly publically documented for the Office team?) a long, long time ago to create a desktop toolbar.
Anyway, they are called Application Desktop Toolbars (or "AppBars"), and the documentation is here. To register one, you call the SHAppBarMessage function with the ABM_NEW message. Complete sample code is available in the linked documentation, unfortunately it is in C++.
To use this from a C# application, you will have to P/Invoke. As far as I know, it is not wrapped by the .NET Framework anywhere, probably because it never gets used by anyone anymore. This CodeProject article appears to have the necessary P/Invoke definitions written out. I can't vouch for their correctness, but armed with the documentation and that as an example, you should be able to cook up a working demo.
There is another CodeProject article here, written by Arik Poznanski as part of a series on using shell features from C#. It looks much more thorough, probably more than you need.
Set the property Form.TopMost unless you have other programs creating topmost windows. Doh!
I have an application whose UI is custom rendered with a theme. I also want to add new non-default-cursors (like the resize cursors when the user intends to resize the window) to match that theme.
With the WinAPI function SetCursor I am only able to change the default pointer for the application, but this is not enough, so I looked up SetSystemCursor which works just fine. Problem is: The latter version changes the cursors system-wide permanently, but I only want them to be changed for my application only.
I thought about copying the previous cursors before I do the SetSystemCursor and re-set them at application exit, but even when I implement a terminate handler it may not be called if the process e.g. just crashes. Also the cursors would still be changed system-wide as long as the application is running.
Specifically for the resize-cursors, I could just drop the window style, make a borderless window, and render/implement the resizing grips and logic myself (then I could just hook the mouse-over events), but that is really just my last resort - I'd rather like to know if it is possible achieve my goal before I do this cumbersome task...
For anyone who is interested: The UI is rendered with WPF, but WPF doesn't provide this functionality either (again, they have it, but just for the default pointer). It's no concern for me to use the WinAPI or other "low-level" calls if I have to, but at the moment it seems there are none that are fitting my needs :(
So if anybody knows how to change the other system cursors (not the default pointer) in WPF or WinAPI just for my application without having to implement custom cursor-logic to my window just for that, you would make my day.
I don't know how to implement this in WPF, but if you want to set the cursor to something other than default, then your window procedure should handle the WM_SETCURSOR message.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms648382(v=vs.85).aspx
I've been googling a lot for this one and I can't seem to find anything. Maybe it's the way that I'm wording it. So basically what I'm looking to do in C# using Windows Forms, is create a form and have it essentially take the shape of the taskbar and do the same functions as the taskbar, but it will sit above the task bar or at the top of the screen.
It can't be "ON TOP" (I'm not trying to block user buttons like the close button of a program they are using).
Autohide would be a plus.
This is the main thing I'm after:
It needs to act just like the task bar. When you maximize any other window, the taskbar does not go over the top of the window, even though it is set to "on top".
You'll want to use an Appbar to do this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144177.aspx
For more information, check out here and here and here.
If you don't want to deal with C++ and Native Code (as #FKunecke correctly proposed) then you'll not find anything predefined for this. What you can do is create a form for your bar and make the visualization calculations by hand, then you can set the screen location of it. That's all. Not forcing the bar form to stay on top will not hide the other app forms so you'll get that for free.
Now, to fully implement what you want there are some problems you need to deal with, such as Taskbar location and height. Then you'll need to use some native code tricks.
How to put a C# programm (ex WPF or WF) under desctop Icons (like a wallpaper)?
I want my Old Good XP Active Desktop made by a some open source C# programm on my Win 7!)
Something like this - Fences .
They have there "windows" appearing underneath icons. I do not want to manage Icons - just put my window under them... BTW any one knows about such operations in other OS’s (Mac etc)?
And I DO NOT WANT TO MANAGE ALL THE ICONS ON MY OWN LIKE bumptop
I think it is quite possible, try this:
Find handle to window with the class "Progman".
Create some window in your application (or, perhaps, in some separate application, you will see the purpose later) and turn off its borders.
Set the parent of the newly created window to desktop handle.
Set the parent of "Progman" window you have found previousely to the window you created.
Desktop will be put on a window owned by your application and it will be possible to manipulate it in the way you want (namely, put something under it).
Also, do not forget to restore desktop's parent when application owning it is closed.
Look for FindWindow, GetClassName and SetParent at http://www.pinvoke.net/
Short answer is you can't really do it (in managed C# anyway). If it's possible, you would need to use Interop, and you'd likely be calling something that Windows doesn't offer as an API.
... although... as Ole Jak mentioned, Stardock looks to be doing it somehow...
The desktop is its own contained item. The same process handles the icons and the wallpaper "behind" those icons.
You are allowed to change the wallpaper to a different image, and you used to be able to create an Active Desktop where HTML content would be displayed, but this was discontinued in Vista.
What are you actually trying to do? Maybe there's another way to achieve a similar result?
There was DreamScene for vista. You could put a video as explorer background. I dont know if you could run a C# program to output the background video.
Assume i have an empty form 100px by 100px at 0,0 coordinates on the screen. It has no border style. Is there any way to have this positioned BEHIND the desktop icons?
I would assume this would involve the process Progman because thats what contains the desktop icons. But no matter what i try... getting window handles and changing parents etc, i cant seem to get the window to appear behind the icons.
Any ideas?
Essentially you want to draw on the desktop wallpaper. The desktop hierarchy looks like this:
"Program Manager" Progman
"" SHELLDLL_DefView
"FolderView" SysListView32
It's the SysListView32 that actually draws the desktop icons, so that's what you have to hook. And you can't just stick your form on top of it; you have to grab a WindowDC to that handle and draw on the DC.
It can be done - it has been done, but you're going to be using a lot of interop. Forget about doing this with a traditional Winforms Form. I don't think I've even seen it done in C#, although somebody did it in python, if that helps. I'm not a python coder myself, but the code is pretty short and easy to understand.
There is a solution to this problem, at least for Windows 8. I postet it in form of an article on CodeProject, so you can read about it here:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/856020/Draw-behind-Desktop-Icons-in-Windows
This works for simple drawing, windows forms, wpf, directx, etc. The solution presented in that article is only for Windows 8.
Google-fu led me to this MSDN forum question:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winformsdesigner/thread/c61d0705-d9ec-436a-b0a6-6ffa0ecec0cc
And this is a blog post regard the major pitfalls with using GetDesktopWindow() or dealing with the desktop handle (as per your other question: C# Position Window On Desktop)
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/02/24/79212.aspx
You also don't want to pass GetDesktopWindow() as your hwndParent. If you create a child window whose parent is GetDesktopWindow(), your window is now glued to the desktop window. If your window then calls something like MessageBox(), well that's a modal dialog, and then the rules above kick in and the desktop gets disabled and the machine is toast.
Anyway, I suspect that it probably CAN be done, but whether you should is another question.