Code Crunching

Today, I show you the second set of screen shots from the Windows 7 Taskbar components. Since Windows 95 - which introduced the last real change in how the user handles multiple running applications on Windows - we all know the notification area. Sadly many programs have abused this area, so that on some users computers this really grow into a monster featuring easily 30 and more icons. Never on my computer though ;-)

Windows 7 stops this Taskbar spamming in a really effictive way. The notification icons will not be shown anymore, at least on default. They are all hidden away. Even when your application wants to show a (bubble) hint, the user will not see it unless the user approved your application first. Now, since sometimes showing a state can be really important, Windows 7 introduced overlay icons in the Taskbar entry for running processes. This way the application can show some information without the need for more screen real estate - the application already has an entry in the Taskbar anyway - at least in most cases.

Click on images to view full size version.

Windows 7 automatically hides all notification icons unless the user wants them to show.

Showing the tasks state in the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Note the overlay icon in the second screen shot. Maybe the application is performing a search. A side effect of this is, that the designers should start creating application icons and overlay icons that work with each other well. Overlay icons are shown only if the user uses large icons in the Windows Taskbar (default setting).

For your Delphi application, simply drop a the TdwOverlayIcon component on your form, connect it to an image list (16 x 16 pixels for bitmap size) and set the image index used. Set it to -1 for displaying no overlay icon.

You have asked for it, so here are the first images for you. Today I want to show you a few screen shots of displaying the progress of a rather lengthy task in the Windows 7 Taskbar. You should not that Microsoft does not encourage you to use this for shorter tasks which usually finish within a few seconds. But this is up to you in the end ;-)

For all of you Delphi 7 users, the first screen shot shows Delphi 7 running on Windows 7 using those components. So, this works as well.

Click on images to view full size version.

Delphi 7 running on Windows 7. The demo application is loaded in the IDE, the components are shown in the tool palette.

The marquee shows a task in progress with undeterminable end - like connecting to a server.

The progress is coming along just fine.

The application may be waiting for some user interaction, the current task is paused.

Further, you can cancel a task, coloring the progressbar red as well.

For those of you not knowing Windows 7 just yet and wondering why some application icons have a border in the taskbar and some do not: Windows 7 allows you to pin applications to the taskbar. This way, they will always be in the same order/place. The framed ones are actually running, others are just waiting to be started.

Over at the Delphi-PRAXiS we had an interesting thread going on the last two days where one user asked for what reason it could have, that his Delphi compiler is so slow. It took about 45 minutes to compile just over 20.000 lines.

The source of the problem was a piece of software, which in my mind never earned to be called software. The network version of the Norton anti-virus software. The user asked his admin to exclude PAS, DFM, and DCU files to be excluded from the check list of files being checked with every access.

The compile time went down to 8 seconds. That is just 0,3% of the original compile time. Sadly though, that will not be working anymore...

Well, as written here before, I have toyed around with Windows 7 and created a few Controls that you can simply place on your Form to support some of the most obvious Windows 7 features. Currently available are:

• Jump Lists - right click your application entry on the taskbar to see those
• Overlay Icon - show the state of your application right in the taskbar (notification icons are hidden by Windows 7 by default, finally)
• Progress indicator in the taskbar button
• Taskbar Thumbnails - you application can be controlled directly from the taskbar preview window

Please note, that if you have Aero turned of, or your Windows 7 is running in a VM, most of the features are not supported by Windows 7 (atm?).

The installer provides packages for Delphi 7, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, and Delphi 2009.

Further, those are just the first version in early Alpha State, but they are for free ;-) If you want to use them to create your own controls, those MUST be placed under GPL. For use in your applications you can choose freely between GPL, LPGL and MPL, whatever suits your needs.

In the coming days I'll post a few screen shots and/or short videos demonstrating those controls in action.

If you have suggestions, improvements, or anything else regarding those controls, do not hesitate to contact me ;-)

Download the installer (1,5 MB)

Note: the installer only copies the files to your local hard drive (default folder: User Documents\Delphi Win7 Support). You must open the corresponding project group/package and install it into your Delphi IDE.

Have fun,
Daniel

Probably tomorrow, I will publish my first attempt to create controls tailored towards Windows 7. Naturally, those controls will run on older Systems (tested on XP and Vista), but the new Windows 7 functionality will be available on Windows 7 only, silently failing on older systems.

Currently, I am setting up a VM with Windows XP and Delphi 2006 to test them. Wait a little more and enjoy ;-)

The packages for Delphi 2006, 2007, and 2009 will be included.   

During the last days I have taken the time to get familar with Windows 7, at least a little. So far, I do like it, though it is far from stable on my machine at the moment - at least, Windows Vista was better in that respect.

The new Taskbar and the start menu are pretty amazing. I like the feature to show progress and states on it, as well as add buttons to the window preview panes. Also, the Jump Lists are quiet nice, so I started importing those features into Delphi, all available as a small component set. Those will be available soon, with more details about what and how they will work.

However, so far I have seen many sample videos, read quiet a few blog entries on how to program those jump list, but they all habe one thing in common: they are missing the code samples. If you are looking for those samples, download the Windows 7 SDK Beta and look into the installation folder. For me, those are at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0\Samples\winui\Shell\JumpList.