Rainmeter in the taskbar

[srs]

Is it possible to get a Rainmeter window into taskbar (as a toolbar)?

I'm looking to move away from Samurize, and this is the only thing holding me back.

If not, I've written a toolbar that I can try adapting for Rainmeter if there is any interest/help from the developers?

[Virginityrocks]

You can place a skin over the taskbar and place it as Stay Topmost. It will flash when you click on the taskbar, but it will stay on top.

[exper1mental]

A taskbar built for Rainmeter? Sounds like a great idea if you can make it work. Is it still in development or is there a page on deviantART or someplace listing it?

As for your question, Rainmeter only shows in the Taskbar app list if you open a window (such as the Manage or About sections), so you'd have to create some sort of external application to display when it's running.

[srs]

spent some time on this and this is what I have so far:

[jsmorley]

We welcome anyone who wants to take a crack at creating 3rd-party plugins for Rainmeter. If you are a reasonably decent C++ or C# developer, you can get started at http://rainmeter.net/cms/Developers. There is not much other "help" we can provide here, other than perhaps answering a question or two if you get stuck someplace.

As to specifically a "taskbar" for Rainmeter, that is something we are not interested in for the core Rainmeter code, and in truth are pretty skeptical about. This has been discussed many times on the forums, but the long and the short of it is that we don't have a lot of interest in trying make Rainmeter into a "shell replacement".

http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11837

Having said that, if you can create a plugin that replicates the functionality of the Windows 8 taskbar, while adding value with Rainmeter'ish customizations an end-user can make in a skin, then I'm all for it. If you can't or don't replicate all the functionality in the current taskbar, then I think it is an idea doomed to be a constant battle with "why doesn't it?"

At a minimum, I would think it would need to support:

Applications minimize to it and maximize from it.
Applications can be "pinned" to it via drag and drop.
Some kind of right-click functionality similar to Windows, at least a "close application".
Open application icons can be re-ordered via drag and drop.
It reacts to "notifications" from applications.
It has some kind of "thumbnail" capability.

In addition, it is not going to be enough to replace just the pure taskbar functionality, but also the Start orb and Notification area stuff as well, since presumably the end-user is going to want to turn off the real Windows taskbar and replace it with this.

I never want to discourage anyone from working in the C++ code and creating new things for Rainmeter. It's one of the important ways the system (and the development team) grows. Just be aware that there will be a lot of healthy skepticism about any attempt to move Rainmeter into replacing or changing core Windows behavior. It sorta isn't what Rainmeter is really all about.

[moshi]

i think this is rather about having Rainmeter (which would be terrible) or single Rainmeter skins (which would be something many people would appreciate) in a taskband similar to the WMP player controls older OSs had.

[jsmorley]

i think this is rather about having Rainmeter (which would be terrible) or single Rainmeter skins (which would be something many people would appreciate) in a taskband similar to the WMP player controls older OSs had.

If you can overcome the heavy-handed control that Windows has over the taskbar, I would certainly agree that having a skin integrate in some significant way with the existing taskbar would be very exciting.

[exper1mental]

spent some time on this and this is what I have so far:

Looks pretty good so far. I though you might want to move this to the plugins section since this is more of a development thread than a feature request thread.

IMPORTANT: If you for some reason decide to quit the project, PLEASE upload the source code and stuff so someone else has the opportunity to pick up where you left off. I've seen far too many projects fail not b/c the original developer quit but b/c he didn't bother to upload his source code.


IMHO the two most important things for it to be able to do are:
1. Display and access the notification tray (and notification pop-ups)
2. View not only pinned apps (with the ability to show which ones are running or minimized) but also apps being run that aren't pinned.

Aside from those things, all the major capabilities (that I've thought about) of the taskbar are already mimic-able in Rainmeter.

[Active Colors]

srs, hey man, where are you? We are still waiting for your plugin

[srs]

sorry got busy with some other stuff.

To clarify this is to bring rainmeter skins into the taskbar, not replace it.

I have it working well so far (there were some crashes and when a taskbar dll crashes it brings down windows explorer as well.... but it turned out to be something else) The main stuff left to do is the ui stuff (letting users pick a skin and removing some options from the menu that are not relavant to the taskbar, etc). The most tedious and unexciting stuff in other words