How to add content to windows taskbar

Question

I have been trying to figure out, for some time, how to add content to the taskbar next to the clock. You can see examples of this in NetSpeedMonitor or NetWorx. I am a noob to taskbar but I cannot find anything no matter how hard I look. I am not interested in ThumbButtonInfo or NotifyIcon. Here are a a couple examples of content in the taskbar(incase I'm not saying this right). I would like so be able to do something similar to the first one:

Thank you, Rymn

Answer 1

There's an example in codeproject showing Extending Explorer with Band Objects using .NET and Windows Forms

Build a Release version of BandObjectLib and register it in the Global Assembly Cache. The easiest way to do this is to open BandObjectLib.sln in Visual Studio, set the active configuration to Release and select 'Rebuild Solution' from the 'Build' menu. The second project in the solution - RegisterLib - is a C++ utility project that performs the 'gacutil /if BandObjectLib.dll' command that puts assembly into GAC.

As you probably already know, Band Objects are COM components. And for the .NET framework to find an assembly that implements a COM component it must be either be registered in the GAC or located in the directory of the client application. There are two possible client applications for Band Objects - explorer.exe and iexplorer.exe. Explorer is located in the windows directory and IE somewhere inside 'Program Files'. So GAC is actually the only one option in this case. Thus .NET assemblies that implement Band Objects should be registered in GAC and all libraries they depend on - like BandObjectLib.dll - should also be there.

Assemblies in the GAC must have strong names and thus key pairs are required. I have provided the BandObjects.snk file with a key pair but I encourage you to replace it with your own. See the sn.exe tool for more details.

Create a new Windows Control Library project and call it SampleBars. We are going to rely on the base functionality of BandObjectLib so we have to add a reference to BandObjectLib\Relase\bin\BandObjectLib.dll. As we are developing a 'Hello World Bar', rename UserControl1.cs and the UserControl1 class inside it appropriately - into HelloWolrdBar.cs and HelloWorldBar. Also put the following lines at the beginning of HelloWorldBar.cs:

using BandObjectLib;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

Make HelloWorldBar class inherit BandObject instead of System.Windows.Forms.UserControl. As I mentioned earlier, Band Objects are COM components so we should use the Guid attribute. Use guidgen.exe to generate your unique GUID or you can use the one I have generated for you:

[Guid("AE07101B-46D4-4a98-AF68-0333EA26E113")]

We also have to sign our assembly with a strong name. You can do this by putting the following line into AssemblyInfo.cs file:

[assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(@"..\..\..\BandObjects.snk")]

Now its time to decide what kind of Band Object we want to develop. Lets make it an Explorer Toolbar as well as a Horizontal Explorer Bar (also known as a Browser Communication Band). All we need to do to implement this decision is to add custom BandObject attribute to our HelloWorldBar class:

[Guid("AE07101B-46D4-4a98-AF68-0333EA26E113")]
[BandObject("Hello World Bar",
BandObjectStyle.Horizontal | BandObjectStyle.ExplorerToolbar,
HelpText = "Shows bar that says hello.")]
public class HelloWorldBar : BandObject
{ ...

That's enough to make our control available through 'View->Explorer Bars' and 'View->Toolbars' explorer menus. It also takes care of menu item text - "Hello World Bar", and hen the menu item is highlighted status bar displays "Shows bar that says hello.". Don't you like declarative programming and custom attributes?

Now it is time to open HelloWorldBar.cs in the Visual Studio Designer and put some controls on it. Although in my version of HelloWorldBar I decided to put a single button with 'Say Hello' caption on it you are free to do something more personalized. I made the size of the button equal to the size of the control's client area and also set its Anchor property to the combination of all possible styles - 'Top, Bottom, Left, Right'. The background color is 'HotTrack' and ForeColor is 'Info'.

The BandObject control has several properties specific to the Band Objects (and so classes derived from it) - Title , MinSize, MaxSize and IntegralSize. I set Title for HelloWorldBar to "Hello Bar" and both MinSize and Size to '150, 24'. Oh, and in button's On Click event handler I put code that displays a message box. This is what my final code looks like (and most of it was generated by VS.Net):

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;

using BandObjectLib;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace SampleBars
{
    [Guid("AE07101B-46D4-4a98-AF68-0333EA26E113")]
    [BandObject("Hello World Bar", BandObjectStyle.Horizontal 
         | BandObjectStyle.ExplorerToolbar, HelpText = "Shows bar that says hello.")]
    public class HelloWorldBar : BandObject
    {
        private System.Windows.Forms.Button button1;
        private System.ComponentModel.Container components = null;

        public HelloWorldBar()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        protected override void Dispose( bool disposing )
        {
            if( disposing )
            {
                if( components != null )
                    components.Dispose();
            }
            base.Dispose( disposing );
        }

        #region Component Designer generated code
        private void InitializeComponent()
        {
            this.button1 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
            this.SuspendLayout();
            // 
            // button1
            // 
            this.button1.Anchor = (((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Top 
                | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Bottom) 
                | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Left) 
                | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Right);
            this.button1.BackColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.HotTrack;
            this.button1.ForeColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.Info;
            this.button1.Name = "button1";
            this.button1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(150, 24);
            this.button1.TabIndex = 0;
            this.button1.Text = "Say Hello";
            this.button1.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.button1_Click);
            // 
            // HelloWorldBar
            // 
            this.Controls.AddRange(new System.Windows.Forms.Control[] { this.button1 });
            this.MinSize = new System.Drawing.Size(150, 24);
            this.Name = "HelloWorldBar";
            this.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(150, 24);
            this.Title = "Hello Bar";
            this.ResumeLayout(false);

        }
        #endregion

        private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Hello, World!");
        }
    }
}

Ok, now we are ready to build SampleBars.dll but its not enough to see it in explorer yet. We have to put our assembly into the GAC as well as register it as a COM server. There are tools - gacutil.exe and regasm.exe that do just this. The C++ utility project named Register in my version of the SampleBars solution liberates me from using these tools manually. It has no files in it, just the following post-build command (debug version):

cd $(ProjectDir)..\bin\Debug
gacutil /if SampleBars.dll
regasm SampleBars.dll

Of cause you have to make sure that Register project is the last one to be built in the solution using Project Dependencies / Build Order.

After building the solution, and executing the gacutil and regasm commands, we are finally ready to start Explorer and see our toolbar and explorer bar. And if you did everything right you should be able to see something like the picture at the top of the article. On this picture you can also see how HelloWorldBar looks in the Windows Taskbar. To achieve this all you need to do is to modify BandObject attribute adding the BandObjectStyle.TaskbarToolBar flag.

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Also you might want to look at this answer

According to Microsoft, Deskbands are not recommended for Windows 7, although they still work. Also keep in mind that Microsoft requires that Deskbands support Aero on Windows 7 via IDeskband2 Interface, rather than IDeskband. Also, Micorosft has officially said that IDeskBand2 may be altered or unavailable in subsequent versions of the operating system or product.

Finally, be very careful about creating shell extensions in managed code.