Taskbar extension (like contacts)

Question

In Windows 10, you can activate different buttons (e.g. task view button, windows ink workspace button, contacts button) by opening the context menu of the taskbar.

This is something different than the classic tray icons, and similar to deskbands (which has been deprecated?).

An example of the contacts button:

How can one achieve this? Is there a API for this? Are there documents available?

I wouldn't take that "deprecated" too literally. The very page they link to says "In Windows 7, deskbands can still be implemented and thumbnail toolbars are not intended to replace them all. Not all applications will lend themselves to a thumbnail toolbar, and another solution such as a deskband or a task in a destination list might be the right answer for your application; you must decide which solution works best for your application as part of your development cycle." — nvoigt, Jul 25 '18 at 12:55

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 25 '18 at 08:42

I think that you might be interested in Shell Extensions/ Taskbar Extensions - Deskbands, please refer to following web-sides for more informations:

Perhaps the Taskbar API of Windows should be helpful in your case. Please note that the explorer.exe would be responsible for loading your extension, so that writing it in C# might have some limitations due to different CLR runtimes loaded.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '18 at 08:10

0

It's commonly called a tray icon or NotifyIcon.

The official class is still in Windows Forms, if you want to be more modern have a look here on what your options are in WPF.

answered Jul 25 '18 at 08:10

nvoigt

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That's not really what I want, or at least it looks very different. Should I give more information about it? Is something missing in my question? – hellow Jul 25 '18 at 08:25
To me it looks like a notify icon that opens a form when you click it. How it's styled and how it looks is up to the programmer I guess. – nvoigt Jul 25 '18 at 08:40
When you look closely at the image, you see, that it is not inside of the notifyicon box, but to the left of it. Also you can (de-)activate it via the context menu of the taskbar itself and not a standalone program. – hellow Jul 25 '18 at 08:46
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@hellow That's called a DeskBand. [See here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13889290/how-do-i-place-my-custom-toolbar-deskband-on-taskbar-in-windows-7-win-wpf). That's C++ territory for multiple reasons though. – nvoigt Jul 25 '18 at 09:26
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/Shobjidl/nn-shobjidl-ideskband2: "Important You should use thumbnail toolbars in new development in place of desk bands, which are not supported as of Windows 7." So it is still not the right thing? – hellow Jul 25 '18 at 09:42
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I updated my question for more clarification. I hope this helps. – hellow Jul 25 '18 at 12:53
@nvoigt Deskbands can be created in other languages fine (eg. C#), apparently: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/2219/Extending-Explorer-with-Band-Objects-using-NET-and – Venryx Jul 12 '19 at 14:55

Taskbar extension (like contacts)

2 Answers2