I would like to make one desktop icon extra big, without affecting all the others. Why? Because I am trying to help out someone with a visual impairment. The reason is that I would like to make it do something special, like enabling/disabling Bluetooth or VPN. A natural alternative would be to have something with a small window, already running, but I was hoping to avoid having to program a new UI.
Is it possible to make a single desktop icon larger so that it would extend (lets say) 4 others?
(If not, what would be the better alternative solution?)
Windows doesn’t support this natively. You can make desktop icons larger or smaller - all of them, not just one, as you already know.
There might be a third-party program which does this, but I haven't discovered one.
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I've been trying to search for ways to change the way windows controls look.
For instance change the OpenFileDialog UI at a windows level, or completely turn the file copy/delete/move dialog into something else, like a series of disks or a bucket filling up with liquid.
Looking around i found that i could write a com app that could be used instead of the default windows ones. But i have no idea where or how to start with these, or even how i could see what i would have to implement to achieve this, nor how i would be able to tell windows to use my custom ones instead of the default ones.
Have tried looking in the microsoft documentation, and i'm 99% sure i'm either unable to search for what i need or it's undocumented.
I know there are some apps from Stardock that could do this where i could just make the graphics, but where's the fun in that?
Anybody able to point me in the right direction?
Interested only in being able to achieve this for windows 10.
You could in theory write your own implementations of IFileOpenDialog and IFileSaveDialog and overwrite the Windows registrations in HKCR\CLSID. This might not affect older applications that use the older open/save common dialogs.
There is also CLSID_ProgressDialog and some progress related interfaces you could take over but I don't know if Explorer actually uses these or its own custom version.
This could obviously break your system so you really have to know what you are doing if you go down this path.
While you are developing this you could choose to selectivity inject into a limited set of processes and hook CoCreateInstance instead.
Changes to existing dialogs (adding/moving/hiding controls and images) can be done with Resource Hacker. This was pretty easy in the 90's but it is more problematic these days because some files are protected and Windows updates are more common.
I was wondering how I could make a simple cross platformed program. What I mean is, I want to make a program that edits iPad/iPhone files easily. I am not sure how to make this. What do I use so like it checks if you have an iPad connected and which iPad to use. Also, what I mean by simple is like all it is is buttons and texts and maybe some pictures. Sort of like Visual Basic. Is there a program that does both of what I am asking for or would I need 2 separate programs? If you don't understand what I am asking, please just say so, because I would really like to make this app. Thanks! Btw, I have a Mac, so if you could suggest Mac programs I could use. :)
I am running windows7 on my laptop, and all is well, but I am jealous of the multitouch on macs. I don't really know how all of this "works", but i'm imagining that it couldn't be that hard to write a program to patch into windows that allows this.
Currently, if I put two fingers on the pad and drag around, it sortv half-heartedly tries to follow both. Or something. It's pitiful. After extended experimentation, I don't think it can really track both points at once. But perhaps I could detect the fumbling that occurs when I put my second finger down mathematically, and then "release" tracking on one of them.
Basically, I'm not trying for true multitouch (like stretching images), but I feel like I ought to be able to get something together that detects a double press as a right click. That's a step in the right direction.
What would I need to write that in? How would I install it?
If you're going to say it's impossible, then ignore that and take it from another direction. What if I wanted to enable a triple tap as a right click? (please no pre-built 3rd party solutions, I want to write this myself) That's certainly got to be possible.
How do I tap in to the resources I need?
This might be a hardware and or driver limitation. Not all touch surfaces (like trackpads) support multitouch.
You might want to check out Raw Input on msdn which supports alternative input methods.
Edit:
Note that the Raw Input API only provides access to multitouch if its supported by your hardware.
This is not possible, this is discussed on the www.insanelymac.com forum, where people create hackintosh pcs (basically pcs running mac osx). Several attempts have been made, but DUE to the construction and METHOD with which MANY touchpads collect sensory data it is impossible. Best of luck...
I think one of the main causes of winrot are the sheer number of services that run at startup (and don't shut down) that phone home every x seconds to see if there is a new version of some piece of software.
Me personally, I disable every single one of them because they seem utterly useless to me. Most of the software packages that use these things, have an option to check for updates whenever you launch the program itself too. This looks way more efficient to me.
I was asking myself what the reason is for companies like Adobe and Apple to create such services that bog clients' computers down and at the same time increase the burden on their own update servers for what looks to me as very little return value for neither of them.
My client requests such a service, but I don't see any reason for it. I want to make sure I'm not missing a piece of the puzzle so I can come back with an educated opinion on why this is should or shouldn't be a desired functionality.
It's usually a desire by management to get brand recognition. It goes something like this:
Oh no. If our program just does its job, the user will never see that it's there, and they'll never find out who we are, and what a great company we are.
We need an icon in the tray; we need a shortcut on the desktop, and in the quick launch toolbar, and at the top level of the Start menu. If we could add a control panel applet, and an item on the right-click menu in Windows Explorer, and an icon in Internet Explorer, that'd be fantastic.
Of course, since our program's so important, the user's going to be using it a lot. Let's add a "speed boost" program that runs at startup, that makes sure that all of our binaries and dependencies are pre-loaded in the cache.
Oh, and we'll need an automated update program, to make sure that all of these components are as wham-bam-great as we can make them.
And can you put a splash screen on that as well?
Can you tell I'm bitter?
Roger's spot on.
Plus, once an application has developed to the point where it already has all the features you could expect it to cover for its intended purpose, the vendor is stuck. They need to keep banging out exciting new versions, so scope bloat creeps in. Instead of doing one thing well and getting out of the way, we must do everything related to it. We must always be in the user's face; they must never be allowed to use software that isn't ours; they must always be interacting with our brand. And of course we must take care to always start an updater task in the background, because we added a completely unnecessary internet-facing browser plugin/toolbar/ActiveX thing that will surely turn out to have security holes.
Acquisitive software is a huge problem that is steadily degrading the user experience on Windows. And it's an arms race: Microsoft hide old application surface interfaces (deprecating the classic start menu, removing quick launch, hiding system tray icons, auto-removing inactive Desktop icons) as they become so full of acquisitive-software junk that they're basically unusable, whilst introducing new ones that "will be better". But how long until applications start "helpfully" adding themselves to the Start menu's MRU list (because you're definitely going to want to use our great software a lot!) and pinning themselves to the Windows 7 dock?
Linux is doing better here because the distros own access to the user and aren't going to put up with any of this crap. Not something Microsoft can get away with though unfortunately.
Bonus Did You Know Fun Fact: Once upon a time, Nero was a nice, elegant CD-burning tool.
Has anyone noticed this odd behavior of application that utilize D3D or OpenGL when they go to full screen in Windows? It applies only when applications go to full screen and then switch back to window or terminate. They either shuffle window positions of other applications (when I am on single monitor machine), or move all the other applications windows to another screen when I am on multiple monitor machine.
I would take this for granted if there weren't for applications that didn't show this two anomalies. So, my question would be what exactly does one need to take care of when writing an application to alleviate these two problems? Also, I am not sure if this problem exists on other platforms besides Windows?
My primary setup concerning this is OpenGL/C++, but I presume this applies to whatever setup you have since it seems to be platform API thing that needs to be taken care of.
edit: OK, here is some more clarification on my observation. Problem persists even on same resolution as desktop one. So, it does not seem to be related to resolution switch, because I've seen application/games that even when they are not in the same resolution as desktop, when they switch back, windows on desktop are restored as they once were before the full screen application was run.
edit2: it looks like it is a resolution switch problem, Windows (at least XP) does not seem to remember positions and size (in case of multiple monitor setup) of applications windows. Looks like only solution is the one I provided in an answer to the question - even though it seems like something OS should provide, at least as an API call or two. I'm still not convinced this is the only solution, there must be an easy way of graceful, easy restoration, no?
Shouldn't you be using ChangedDisplaySettingsEx(..., CDS_FULLSCREEN, NULL)? That will tell the system the resolution swap is temporary.
I can't say that I'm 100% certain about the situation you're experiencing. However, my guess is it's because most D3D/OpenGL games will change the resolution of your machine when they startup/shutdown for performance reasons.
The ones you see that don't shuffle the windows around are likely not changing the resolution because they may be able to run at your current settings.
Hm, I've gone through some more research about this - it looks like there is no default fallback on restoring all running windows sizes and positions after changing resolution, so it must be done from within an application (at least in XP).
So, in order to gracefully return back from other resolution (full screen game for example), I would need to get all running applications hWnd's with EnumWindows and appropriate callback and store each of the windows RECT structure via GetWindowRect in a list.
When switching back to desktop resolution I would EnumWindows again, but with a different callback which sets each of the running application windows position and size with SetWindowPos, using the list of RECTs I've saved before switching to full screen.
There are gotcha's, ofcourse, like watching you get a window hwnd only through EnumWindows etc. It seems odd that OS doesn't provide a feature like that, even if only API. I wonder how other OS's out there handle this, if they handle it at all.