No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape {Solved}

endernafi · Post by **endernafi** » Sun May 11, 2014 2:58 pm

Hi all,

I have a small utility app whose windowShape is set to an image and decorations set to empty.
Under these circumstances, the app doesn't show up on taskbar and app switcher {you know, alt+tab}.

Search on the forums didn't reveal anything useful, nor the documentation...
I'm sure there's a simple way to achieve this.

Thanks for any help...

Best,

~ Ender

jacque · Post by **jacque** » Sun May 11, 2014 7:40 pm

Only toplevel windows are in the taskbar. That prevents palettes and other secondary windows from being listed there. I'm not sure if the omission of windows that have a windowshape is a bug or not. I suspect the engine is looking for a "toplevel" window and is ignoring all the others.

paul_gr · Post by **paul_gr** » Sun May 11, 2014 8:21 pm

endernafi wrote:I have a small utility app whose windowShape is set to an image and decorations set to empty.
Under these circumstances, the app doesn't show up on taskbar and app switcher {you know, alt+tab}.

That was my experience around 5 years ago. Found a couple of old executables to confirm it.
I don't know of any way around this.

Paul

endernafi · Post by **endernafi** » Sun May 11, 2014 9:55 pm

Jacque hi,
Just to be clear, my app consists just one card. No substacks, no palettes, ...
I suspect that the engine thinks an empty-decoration-stack as non-topLevel, right?
Then it's a bug.

Paul,
Thanks for confirmation.
I'll file a bug report but I don't think team can find time to fix such a low priority thing.
Probably I have to live with it

Best,

~ Ender

paul_gr · Post by **paul_gr** » Sun May 11, 2014 9:58 pm

You might be able to control your app using a trayicon, but the last time I used one was with Rev 3.5 back in 2009 on XP...

Paul

FourthWorld · Post by **FourthWorld** » Mon May 12, 2014 12:51 am

endernafi wrote:Jacque hi,
Just to be clear, my app consists just one card. No substacks, no palettes, ...
I suspect that the engine thinks an empty-decoration-stack as non-topLevel, right?
Then it's a bug.

Paul,
Thanks for confirmation.
I'll file a bug report but I don't think team can find time to fix such a low priority thing.
Probably I have to live with it

I wouldn't worry about overloading them - you'd hardly be the first to report issues with windowshape:
http://quality.runrev.com/buglist.cgi?q ... indowshape

Maybe this one is close enough to yours that it could benefit from your adding to it?:
http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5864

The bigger question is whether this is a bug with LC or with Windows. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. If you can find examples of other apps that use custom window shapes and still provide standard task bar behavior, it may be helpful to note them in the report.

endernafi · Post by **endernafi** » Mon May 12, 2014 1:04 am

FourthWorld wrote: The bigger question is whether this is a bug with LC or with Windows.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
If you can find examples of other apps that use custom window shapes and still provide standard task bar behavior,
it may be helpful to note them in the report.

You're right Richard, it sure might be a bug of Windows itself.
Since I'm not a Windows user, I don't know many examples.
Yet, I vaguely remember that SonyEricsson's PC Suite {SE Suite} from the good ol' feature phone days
was a custom windowShape program and it didn't have this kind of problem.

I'll contribute to that bug report hoping that I'm not spending team's valuable time.

Best,

~ Ender

AndyP · Post by **AndyP** » Mon May 12, 2014 3:18 pm

Hi Ender,

There is a long standing and ignored bug on this which is tied in with the Iconic state of the stack

It took me a while to work out how to fix this when I was making pointandsee. http://pointandsee.co.uk/

Try this: set the windowshape to title not empty.

on preOpenStack
//must be first or the minimise wont work
set the windowShape of this stack to 1014 //your graphic id
set the decorations of this stack to "title"
end preOpenStack

In my minimise button, I have:

set the decorations of this stack to "minimize"
set the iconic of this stack to true

and add this to the stack script

-- End minimise when clicked in Taskbar
on unIconifyStack
--set back to the window shape
set windowShape of me to 1014 //your graphic id
set the decorations of this stack to "title"

-- set to float above all other windows
set the systemWindow of me to true
end unIconifyStack

Let me know how you get on.

endernafi · Post by **endernafi** » Tue May 13, 2014 9:01 am

Andy,

It works like a charm; can't thank you enough

Cheers,

~ Ender

mattmaier · Post by **mattmaier** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:46 pm

[edit] nevermind, I commented out systemWindow and now it layers properly.
_____________________________________-
This sort of worked. I didn't use the windowShape part because I just want it to be a rectangle without the decorations. So there are still decorations that I'd like to get rid of, but whatevs.

The important thing is that now the application shows up on the taskbar and in alt-tab. But it doesn't layer properly. If I alt-tab through all the windows my application stays on top of everything. If it's not minimized it doesn't let any other window come to the top.

mattmaier · Post by **mattmaier** » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:48 pm

Actually, this just doesn't work. I'm on Windows 8.1 and community DP7.
I tried using a graphic to set the windowShape, which works, but it also makes the application disappear from the taskbar, alt+tab, and task manager. Basically anything that gets rid of the title bar seems to push the application into background processes.

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No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape {Solved}

No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape {Solved}

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Re: No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape

Re: No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape

Re: No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape

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Re: No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape {Solved}

Re: No AppIcon on Taskbar if used windowShape {Solved}