Custom Animated System Tray Icons

The topic is back again...

Published on April 27, 2006 By Ronan H In Docks

OK, every so often this comes up for me. Its a feature i would absolutely LOVE to see in OD+. It would make my complete replacement of the Windows Start Bar & System Tray complete. Seeing as we are in the midst of major updates in OD+ i thought i owuld bring it up again and see if its fruitful. I assume most people know what i am talking about but ill go through it again just in case...

Go back to a time when there was no such thing as OD+ or anything similar on Windows. On a laptop for example you had your generic battery icon which would change visually depending on how much power you had left. Obviously not a very pretty icon, very pixellated etc...

Now take today when we have OD+ and such like, we can have beautiful colourful, crisp icons thanks to the fabulous talented artists in the WC Community... All with me? OK, say you replace your Windows Start Bar with (in my case) a Start Menu Docklet on the botom left corner, a dock with open programs on the bottom centre of the screen, and finally a dock in the bottom right cornet with just the system tray in it.

Fine and dandy, now i replace all the staic icons with fancy ones from Jairo B and the like, and then i come to my battery icon, which changes state. I can replace it with a single static icon representing a battery, as i have done, but it doesnt change visually as the power in the machine dwindles or increases. THIS is what i would like to see in OD+, as im sure many many others would.

Now im aware that there are many docklets that do this by themselves, but i cant put them into my system tray dock, the best i can do is a static image. So i guess what i am saying is that it would be great if it was possible to replace the battery icon with state changing images, or better still, a docklet that does the job.

And obviously its not just the battery icon, there are many other programs that sink icons into the system tray that change state also, so the same would be nice for them...

So there ye go, shout loud if this is something that you would like to see, because i know i would. Any feedback would be great. OD+ developers, keep up the good work. Its the best program i have seen in 12 years of computing!!!

Ronan H

Comments

ZubaZ

on Apr 27, 2006

The trick is that the "animated" icon isn't really an animated icon. It's a tiny app getting fed data from another app. I run a battery metter docklet on my dock. I also ran a net meter and a few others over time.

If there is an animated icon that you want to be an object dock, you first have to know how to "hook" it to the application. Contact teh vendor, see if they'll hook you up with an API or SDK. The come back here and see if anyone is willing to help you build such a thing.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

Ronan H

on Apr 27, 2006

Yeah i had a thought about such a thing when i posted this topic a few months ago. I was trying to find out where the battery icon thing is on my pc, as in, the image files have to be somewhere in my file system. I was hoping to find them and replace them with my own, but i didnt have any luck... Is that what you mean by the API or SDK stuff?

Ro

seldomseen

on Apr 27, 2006

Thanks, Z, for the clues. I'm curious about the animated stuff, too, but don't want to hog CPU cycles... Thanks, mate.

Chris TH

on Apr 27, 2006

Now im aware that there are many docklets that do this by themselves, but i cant put them into my system tray dock,

Why not? There are several SysStats battery meter docklets that work fine in the system tray. The only thing is that it inserts a separator that doesn't seem to be deletable (I only just tested this while writing so all options/combinations are not guaraneed to have been investigated)...

Corky_O

on Apr 27, 2006

There are also programs out there like "ResHack" which will allow you to open up executables, .dll's, etc. and "hack" the file.

In this case, you would first make a backup of the file you want to manipulate > open with the program (ResHack?) > change images in file > save.

As always, hacking is a crap-shoot until proven effective, so make sure to save the original file first for use in an emergency, if you attempt such a feat.

Nimix

on May 29, 2006

I think the version 2.0 of my docklet (ObjectDock Tray) can do what you want. It displays the icons from the systray and you can replace every single icon so that you can replace, for the battery icon for instance, the icon showing the full battery, the 3/4 full, half full, the empty etc.

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