Get Taskbar Position?

Question

I have my main Application hidden using:

Application.ShowMainForm:= False;

The Application uses a TTrayIcon which I have assigned a Popup menu to.

By using and selecting one of the Popup menus in the Tray Icon I want to make my Application visible again, but I want the position of the Application to popup above the Taskbar.

By default the Windows Taskbar is at the bottom, so in this case my Application would appear in the bottom right just above the clock - of course the Taskbar can be moved and sized by the user so I need a way of knowing definitively these metrics.

Simply put, I want my Application to appear in the corner of the Taskbar above (or next) to the System clock.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Use SHAppBarMessage to get the location of the taskbar:

SHAppBarMessage(ABM_GETTASKBARPOS, appBarData);

That, along with the size of the "primary" monitor:

nScreenWidth := GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN);
nScreenHeight := GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN);

and you can work out if the Taskbar is located at the

• top
• left
• bottom
• right

of the screen, and its size.

{Calculate taskbar position from its window rect. However,
 on XP it may be that the taskbar is slightly larger or smaller than the
 screen size. Therefore we allow some tolerance here.
}
if NearlyEqual(rcTaskbar.Left, 0, TASKBAR_X_TOLERANCE) and
        NearlyEqual(rcTaskbar.Right, nScreenWidth, TASKBAR_X_TOLERANCE) then
begin
    // Taskbar is on top or on bottom
    if NearlyEqual(rcTaskbar.Top, 0, TASKBAR_Y_TOLERANCE) then
        FTaskbarPlacement := ABE_TOP
    else
        FTaskbarPlacement := ABE_BOTTOM;
end
else
begin
    // Taskbar is on left or on right
    if NearlyEqual(rcTaskbar.Left, 0, TASKBAR_X_TOLERANCE) then
        FTaskbarPlacement := ABE_LEFT
    else
        FTaskbarPlacement := ABE_RIGHT;
end;

With that you can pop up your toast:

case FTaskbarPlacement of
ABE_RIGHT:
   begin
      Self.Left := rcTaskbar.Left-Self.Width;
      Self.Top := rcTaskbar.Bottom - Self.Height;
   end;
ABE_LEFT:
   begin
      Self.Left := rcTaskbar.Right;
      Self.Top := rcTaskbar.Bottom - Self.Height;
   end;
 ABE_TOP:
    begin
       Self.Left := rcTaskbar.Right - Self.Height;
       Self.Top := rcTaskbar.Bottom;
    end;
 else //ABE_BOTTOM
    // Taskbar is on the bottom or Invisible
    Self.Left := rcTaskbar.Right - Self.Width;
    Self.Top := rcTaskbar.Top - Self.Height;
 end;