I'm trying to "dismember" my Win7 TaskBar and transfer it's parts to a skin, effectively turning it into a custom TaskBar.Specifically, i'm trying to transfer the Start Menu, the Application Switcher (doc like part) and Notification Area. Those would be hard or impossible to rebuild and i find them useful.
What i've done is using an AutoHotKey (similar to AutoIT) script to get the skin handle as well as the handles to those task bar elements. Then using the same script i changed the parent of those elements from the TaskBar to the skin. I was able to confirm the transfer was successful using Windows Detective (open source alternative to Spy++) but the controls turned invisible
As a test i managed to make them stand alone (childs of the desktop) and attach them to a test GUI created by the sript itself. They have an ugly black border but are working correctly.
Is there something special about Rainmeter skins that would prevent externally added childs to be visible? Did somebody manage to achieve something similar before?