The GetSystemMetrics function in Windows retrieves system metrics and configuration settings. One such metric is the recommended size (width and height) of ‘small icons’: Small icons typically appear in window captions and in small icon view. Another place where small icons show up is the notification area. MSDN contains a guide to Creating DPI-Aware Applications. …
Tag Archive: notification area
Jan 03
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Recap & Sample
Over the past month I’ve looked at how to implement a Windows 7-style notification area application in WPF. I covered 6 different topics: Part 1: Removing Border Resize Part 2: Notify Icon Position – Windows 7 Part 3: Taskbar Position Part 4: Multiple Monitors & Working Area Part 5: Fixing Aero Border Padding Part 6: …
Dec 28
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Part 6 (Notify Icon Position: Pre-Windows 7)
In Part 2 of this series I demonstrated how to use the Shell_NotifyIconGetRect function to find the position of a notify icon. This function is new to Windows 7, however, and we must find a different solution for earlier versions of Windows. This turns out to be quite difficult. A post on the MSDN forums …
Dec 20
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Part 5 (Fixing Aero Borders)
An issue that came to my attention only recently is that the borders of WPF (update: WPF is not actually to blame) windows without captions/title-bars (that is, with ResizeMode set to ‘CanResize’ and WindowStyle set to ‘None’) are drawn incorrectly when the DWM (read: Aero Glass) is enabled. Specifically, the upper and left borders are …
Dec 09
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Part 3 (Taskbar Position)
In the previous post in this series, I showed how to find the location of a notify icon by implementing the new Windows 7 Shell32.dll function Shell_NotifyIconGetRect in managed code for use with the System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon class. In this post, I will look at how to accurately position a window above (or adjacent to) a notify …
Dec 08
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Part 2 (Notify Icon Position)
You may have noticed that the notification area applications in Windows 7 (Volume/Power/Network/Action Centre) appear centred above their icon. I wanted Keiki to do the same; the current version is hardcoded to sit in the bottom right of the screen, which causes a few problems: The taskbar position is not taken into account; the window …
Dec 07
Windows 7-style Notification Area Applications in WPF: Part 1 (Removing Resize)
Keiki, my OptusNet Usage Meter, is designed to sit in the notification area (or system tray, if you prefer) and behave similarly to the default system ‘applets’ (Volume/Network/Action Centre/Power). That is, the application becomes visible with a single left click on the notify (tray) icon, and is hidden again when focus is lost. I have …