Animated status icon?

General
1

All,

I’m making a tool that will only have an icon onto which the user will drop a file. Then some magic should happen.
While the tool is processing the file, I’d like the program icon to show something is happening.
Does anyone know a good way to do this?

thanks

Gert

2

Which platform?

3

For desktop app you can use a canvas and react on the various drag events. This includes a redraw of the canvas.

4

Use a timer thaat will load an icon (different) every 10 / 15 / … / 30 seconds ?

5

Greg, Windows & Mac.
Emile, do you know how to change the program icon at runtime? I did find this info, but maybe I’m missing the obvious.

thanks

6

Never saw such a behaviour on OS X, Linux or Windows (and i am glad the Icons stay as they are…). :slight_smile:

7

Several of the apps I use present a progress bar on the icon.

8

Mail doesn’t “animate” but it definitely updates the unread counters
I’ve seen others do this kind of thing

9

Check out the Xojo documentation, there’s a way to get a graphics object from the Dock icon, to which you can then draw on top of.

10

It is extremely simple on Mac with http://documentation.xojo.com/index.php/DockItem.Graphics

Here is for instance a quick test I did in a button with two pictures front and back of a card :

[code]Sub Action()
static cardface as boolean

cardface = not cardface

if cardface then
app.DockItem.Graphics.DrawPicture(cardback,0,0,1024,1024,0,0,cardback.width, cardback.height)
app.DockItem.UpdateNow
else
app.DockItem.Graphics.DrawPicture(king,0,0,1024,1024, 0, 0, king.width, king.height)
app.DockItem.UpdateNow
end if
End Sub
[/code]

In Windows that may be possible with declares on the taskbar icons, but yet, handling the dropping of things on top of taskbar icons is not built in Windows either. I would try a plain box borderless window the size of a Windows icon instead.

11

Oh. I thought we are talking about an Icon on the Desk, not in the Dock or Taskbar. :slight_smile: