Animated expanding out Desktop Tiles - Skin HELP

[cpt.failcraft]

About a month ago I had an idea where if my mouse were to hover over a Game controller icon, from it background tiles would expand out and align in a grid like style and attached to them would be the Desktop Shortcuts (b.t.w when a new shortcut is added a new tile will be automatically made (same thing if one were removed)). If my mouse were leave the effect area of the expanded tiles, they would collapse into the main icon a.k.a the controller icon.

I have tried multiple script codes, .Lua, .ini/.inc, power-shell, and more. And nothing seems to work, I would just like to know if it is even possible or if I'm wasting my time.

(Note: if it is possible please tell me how so I can code it)

Thank you

[tass_co]

About a month ago I had an idea where if my mouse were to hover over a Game controller icon, from it background tiles would expand out and align in a grid like style and attached to them would be the Desktop Shortcuts (b.t.w when a new shortcut is added a new tile will be automatically made (same thing if one were removed)). If my mouse were leave the effect area of the expanded tiles, they would collapse into the main icon a.k.a the controller icon.

I have tried multiple script codes, .Lua, .ini/.inc, power-shell, and more. And nothing seems to work, I would just like to know if it is even possible or if I'm wasting my time.

(Note: if it is possible please tell me how so I can code it)

Thank you

Like the example shared in the title below?
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=41394

[cpt.failcraft]

Yea exactly how do I do that?

[Yincognito]

About a month ago I had an idea where if my mouse were to hover over a Game controller icon, from it background tiles would expand out and align in a grid like style and attached to them would be the Desktop Shortcuts (b.t.w when a new shortcut is added a new tile will be automatically made (same thing if one were removed)). If my mouse were leave the effect area of the expanded tiles, they would collapse into the main icon a.k.a the controller icon.

I have tried multiple script codes, .Lua, .ini/.inc, power-shell, and more. And nothing seems to work, I would just like to know if it is even possible or if I'm wasting my time.

(Note: if it is possible please tell me how so I can code it)

Thank you

Apart from automatically integrating things with the actual desktop shortcuts in Windows (if I understood correctly), the rest is just !HideMeter... and !ShowMeter... either individually or by group(s). Possibly using the ActionTimer plugin if you really want to go fancy and slow motion movements instead of just hiding and showing tiles instantly. See here for some basic example:
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=29082

As for using the actual desktop shortcuts automatically, you could use the FileView plugin with the Desktop folder path, as that should retrieve its contents ready to be represented by meters on the screen based on how you lay out your visual side. This assumes the icons for those shortcuts are already created or retrieved by Windows, no need to complicate things with some icon extraction approach.

See meters, bangs and plugins in the Rainmeter manual:
https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/

So yes, it is definitely possible, and this would be, in general, how to do it. Whether it would be a waste of time or not, that's your assessment to make, and it will probably depend on how much effort you're willing to put in, how much you want it, and the degree of success you'll have with implementing it.

One other thing, in terms of healthy / efficient principles: start small, make sure stuff works as you want to before expanding the approach, and know exactly what you want.

P.S. Personally, I would avoid "creating and removing" things via a Lua factory script, much simpler to just make a sufficient number of them and then hiding or showing them as needed...