Refresh System Tray Area

Question:

In certain cases with assorted Microsoft operating systems, icons representing now-closed programs are still visible in the System Tray area... until you move your mouse over the System Tray (at which point the O/S says to itself, "Ah, time to update the icons in the Tray now, so that they reflect reality.") Or so it seems to me, under some circumstances.

Does anyone know if there's a command to have this "refresh" done programmatically, i.e., without physically sliding the mouse over the Tray?

Answer:

You will need to find window handle of the system tray, gets its bounding rectangle, and programmatically moves the mouse over it.

I believe the operative API is GetWindowRect, documented at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winui/WinUI/WindowsUserInterface/Windowing/Windows/WindowReference/WindowFunctions/GetWindowRect.asp

Getting the system tray's handle seems to consist of (assuming the user hasn't switched shells):

ControlHandle=cWndByWndSpec("Shell_TrayWnd","explorer",0)

So the code would look something like this:

ControlHandle=cWndByWndSpec("Shell_TrayWnd","explorer",0)
buf = BinaryAlloc(16)
dll = StrCat(DirWindows(1), "USER32.DLL")
DllCall(dll, long:"GetWindowRect", long:ControlHandle, lpbinary:buf)
BinaryEodSet(buf, 16)
left = BinaryPeek4(buf, 0)
top = BinaryPeek4(buf, 4)
right = BinaryPeek4(buf, 8)
bottom = BinaryPeek4(buf, 12)
BinaryFree(buf)
Message("Coordinates", "%left% %top% %right% %bottom%")

Now use the MousePlay function to move the mouse to those coordinates.

User Reply:

Thanks very much -- works like a charm!

Article ID:   W16725

File Created: 2005:02:18:12:22:02

Last Updated: 2005:02:18:12:22:02

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