Rainmeter in the taskbar

[Active Colors]

Man, I had thought that you had dropped creating this plugin.

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

That what I expect

I can test it, if you want, I would be glad to use it.

[exper1mental]

Hope your still working on this cause I really want test this plugin!

[aglaidson]

Any news about the plugin?

[winterwulf]

Hi Srs, Any news?


LF to see it working

[srs]

This is very much experimental, so when it crashes it will take down explorer with it. That means all open explorer windows as well as the taskbar. Only for experienced users.

Recovery steps in case you need it:

• ctrl + escape will bring up task manager
• File -> Run new task -> explorer
• You may need to rename the dll to prevent explorer from loading it, which you can do from the "Browse" dialog
• You can exit explorer by ctrl+shift+right click on the task bar (there will be an option that says "Exit Explorer")

Install:

• close all other rainmeter instances
• create a new portable install
• copy over files in the attachment, and replace (only windows 8.1+ x64 for now)
• run "Taskbar_Test" to make sure it works, then close it
• open an administrative cmd prompt, navigate to portable install directory and type "regsvr32 Taskbar.dll"
• right click on taskbar, select "toolbars"
• right click on taskbar, select "toolbars" (yes, you have to do this twice)
• select "RainBar"

Uninstall:

• open an administrative cmd prompt, navigate to portable install directory and type "regsvr32 /u Taskbar.dll"

Source code is here

[Jeff]

Glad to bump this thread after 2 years to report that it still works perfectly on Win 10 2004 and that I'll probably run 2 RM instances just for the taskbar skins
Everything works fine, except the exit button, which is straight up gone (which I don't know if it's because of this plugin or new version being avaiable) but I dislike the removal of Exit which I get for a Proof of Concept

[srs]

Happy its working out for you

Remember that the .dll is loaded by explorer and doesn't run in its own process so having the "exit" button would just kill explorer...

[Alex88]

Happy its working out for you

Remember that the .dll is loaded by explorer and doesn't run in its own process so having the "exit" button would just kill explorer...

Given that my 'suite'/config is basically contained within the taskbar, I'd be remiss to not try this, and have it working almost perfectly for me:

Click to animate, shadow quality is due to the recorder settings and not anything Rainmeter

RainBarExample.gif

I definitely haven't gone through all possibilities, but only a couple bugs I've seen so far: updating individual parts of a skin [!UpdateMeter MeterName] seems to make the toolbar's position reset to the left side, while the normal [!Update] and [!Redraw] work fine. For what I regularly use, the only plugin that doesn't seem to work is the WebNowPlaying plugin. In the meantime I found the Chrome extension streamkeys along with the Rainmeter MediaKey measure, and for me it does the main Play/Pause/Next/Previous that I use (will still keep WebNowPlaying on my original config), and for personal use I definitely plan to use this.

If I do release my config into a .rmskin, I'd still use my original approach following the official Rainmeter installation along with my mouse/autohide method I made as it works well enough, and if people ask further then this is an unofficial option presented as is.

Just from my thought, I think the amount of desktop-based Rainmeter skins and interest heavily outnumber the cases of taskbar-only skins, so further I don't think it's really needed for any possible official integration; most people are interested in desktop-sized configurations, and there's only so much you can pack into the taskbar and still have the information useable.

And I definitely agree with that it shouldn't try to replace anything already native to the Windows taskbar (ex. application launcher, system tray), just the role of adding an informational display mainly and some of the standard things that Rainmeter already offers (ex. media keys, extra shortcuts like emptying the Recycle Bin, etc.), and it's basically already there I'd say. Even the official Microsoft toolbars only go so far feature-wise.

Needless to say, fantastic work srs.

[thunderousleader10]

This is awesome! Thank you so much, its exactly what I've been looking for!

Is there anyway to have multiple toolbar instances running simultaneously?

[Alex88]

This is awesome! Thank you so much, its exactly what I've been looking for!

Is there anyway to have multiple toolbar instances running simultaneously?

My guess is probably not, similar to how I don't think it's possible to have multiple instances of the normal Windows toolbars. There might be a way to get multiple instances of the service to run but I don't know much in that direction. I haven't tried too much but I also believe only specifically Taskbar.ini can be read and loaded, so the best bet is to condense the multiple skins you are thinking of into Taskbar.ini.