Work with the taskbar of Windows 7 in WPF applications
Recently I have published a series of articles that has been devoted to possibilities of Windows 7 for developers to work with the task panel. I have received a large quantity of responses for this time. Thanks you very much for it. That is interesting, questions were absolutely various subjects. However, the most part of questions was on a theme of use of similar functionality in WPF applications. Really, in the majority of examples I have lost sight WPF applications. I will try to compensate this defect here.
Really, use of these possibilities in WPF applications not strongly differs from their implementation in WinForms. As is known, for use of possibilities of the task panel of Windows 7 we used WindowsFormsExtensions static class in which to contain extension-methods for Form class (form representation in Windows Forms). Unfortunately, in.NET Interop Sample Library there is no have similar class for WPF applications. However it is completely not difficult to create it independently.
If to look at WindowsFormsExtensions class it becomes clear, that all calls are forwarded to Windows7Taskbar class which for form identification is used Handle of window. In a case with Windows Forms the form has property Handle which returns the necessary value. The first task is to receive handle of WPF window. Unfortunately, WPF windows do not have Handle property. However, it is possible to take advantage of WindowInteropHelper class and to receive this information. For this purpose I have made one more method which returns Handle of WPF-window.
private static IntPtr GetWindowHandle(Window window)
{return (new WindowInteropHelper(window)).Handle;
}
Further in all extension methods it is necessary to change parametre type (type to which it is applied extension method) from Form to Window. After that the majority of possibilities are already accessible to WPF-applications.
Other problem at work with the task panel of Windows 7 is that in some situations it is required to intercept Windows messages which come to a current window. In Windows Forms for these purposes it was possible to override WndProc method and in it to catch all necessary messages.
protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{ if (m.Msg == Windows7Taskbar.TaskbarButtonCreatedMessage) { // ...}
base.WndProc(ref m);
}
Unfortunately, for WPF windows of such method is not present. However, in WPF application it is possible to take advantage of HwndSource object and to add interception of Windows messages through it.
private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{HwndSource.FromHwnd(new WindowInteropHelper(this).Handle).AddHook(WndProc);
}
private IntPtr WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, int msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, ref bool handled)
{ if (msg == WM_DWMSENDICONICLIVEPREVIEWBITMAP) { // ...}
return IntPtr.Zero;}
In other the usage of possibilities of the task panel of Windows 7 in WPF applications is implemented similarly Windows Forms.
Sample applications: