We always talk about hacking the TaskBar itself, but not much has been done as yet. Maybe this can help us:
DEPENDENCY http://www.linos-software.com/
I haven't tried it, but just saw it on www.shellcity.net today. It tells you what .dll or .ocx files are used by an app. Worth a try. If I recall correctly, knowing what the TaskBar calls on is part of the problem. This could tell us what to edit.

I could be mistaken, however, this would be the next big thing to hack. After that, maybe the standard TitleBar. Maybe we can get it down to just the text, change possitioning, or switch justification.

Just some ideas.

I like red's idea. of the title bar. I would like to have the text centered or have the button on the left. Sweet idea.

So WinT, here you have your answer.

Centering text on your title bar in XP is relatively simple. I don't know how many people are into messing with visual styles, but I accomplished this once by adding a new property called content alignment (i think thats what it was) and setting it to center. You can see a good example of it in the neowin visual style. I think its at deskmod. If not, look for one called metallic2. They both do it. I'm sure there are others, but those are the only two I can think of.

I'd like to remove the icons from the tasks on the taskbar.

Outstanding ideas. I'll go get that app Red and get to work!

Qoa, I'de like to remove those icons also, but would have no clue as to where to begin. Will look into it though. I'de like just the text myself.

Red, that Dependency app was an outstanding find. I checked to see what files were called upon by Explorer.exe, and there were a few on this list that I had never messed with.

I've gotto go eat now, but when I get back, it's hack time. I'll report here on my findings, or start a new thread if I accomplish something major.

Thanks again for the link. That app is just what I've been needing. In fact, we should all have it. Could really help us out with dll hacking.

Well, i checked the dependencies of both Shell32.dll and Explorer.exe, and even though there were several DLL files that I had never looked at before, after going through all of them, still nothing new. Most of the files had nothing more then Version Info in them. That's it.

However, I did run across alot of dialog boxes that you see all the time, and lots of string tables and message tables full of day to day messages and text that we all see throughout windows, BUT, editing the above mentioned content would probably serve us no purpose.

Red, I forgot to tell you in my original post the the Taskbar is not a possiblility. While talking with Grigri in IRC one day, I asked him about it, and the taskbar is actually a WINDOW! And it's created dynamically, or something like that. I forgot the very intelligent, detailed, programmer style description that he gave me, but trust me, we can't mess with it.

I always used to think that it might be considered a DIALOG BOX, for if it were that, we could tear into it, but, unfortunately, it's not.

So, if actual program WINDOWS were dialog boxes, we could hack everything, but I suppose that windows are created as needed. So, when you open explorer, it CREATES a window, rather then loading one from a DLL somewhere. I think, I could be wrong, but throughout all my Reshacker use, I've never run up on an actual window.

So, let's try something else I suppose, or hear more suggestions on this.

hey, I'm back! cable gone for a few days :-(

Just an idea, couldn't you HIDE the taskbar, and use bang.exe to run one of the LS taskbars, or another taskbar-ish program? I know I saw a proggie here on VP 6 mo. - 1 year ago for defining 'clear zones' on the desktop (the same way apps don't overlap the taskbar) and putting custom skinned content into those zones. One of the LS taskbars would be ideal, as you can pretty much do anything with them. But it's been so long since I did anything to my LS desktop, I don't even remember if you can call the taskbar dll by itself. :-(

My taskbar back then was pretty cool tho :-) :
Old LS SS

Mei

If not changing the taskbar to a LS module, how about resizing it? It seems if we could find out what controls the taskbar's size, change that so some other value, so we could have a smaller, centered taskbar, and with something like tclock it would be pretty damn sweet

I notice this taskbar problem when I play fullscreen games, it will auto adjust to the screen size, and if I kill the game and it is locked in a different resolution, it will stay that way until I change it back. So, maybe there is some value somewhere to not auto-adjust the desktop/taskbar or something to over ride it and change the size of it.

(Also, has anyone tried using taskbar wallpaper (the proggie) with the newest tclock and get desireable results?)

Taskbar size:
AFAIK, the taskbar is as big as the desktop, and there's no way to change that, aside from using a program to exclude display space from the dekstop, and the downside to that is it literally shrinks EVERYTHING... wallpaper, space for icons & windows, taskbar, the whole deal.

You might not be able to do a centered TB, but with a partially transparent XP Theme TB component you could probably split it up into pieces, with transparency inbetween.

Speaking of themes (DOH!) XP themes can adjust the thickness of the taskbar. I'm not sure if there's a limit to it, but if it could be adjusted to nothing... :-)

Oh, and as far as Dependencies go, I found this cool little extension, by the same guy who made the Icon X CME.
PESX - it adds a 'dependencies' tab to the properties sheet of any executable(exe, dll, etc).

Mei

Well, after playing for a bit with bang.exe and my old LS setup, I decided to look for an easier way. I found a few apps for hiding the start bar, but then realized that you can do it(in XP) with gpedit.msc (meaning... reg entry.) So I started looking for 'taskbar replacements'. Three links down, got the VP 'Start Menu & Taskbar' page. Clicked just for fun. Read a bit.

*sigh*... oh well, so much for a new hack...

Stardock's Object Bar does exactly what we want. Of course, we don't really know exactly what we want it to do yet, but it really doesn't seem matter, cos it pretty much does anything related to the taskbar and systray. Some of the screenshots are just incredible. And really, if you get beyond what OB can do, there's DesktopX (I had forgotten about it, the last time I saw it was right after Win98 came out, and WindowBlinds was a huge deal).

Oh yeah. The latest version, 1.5 has a feature to replace the Desktop RIght click menu.

It'd be great to have a free version, and I'm still looking forward to GriGri's work on that menu extension, it'll probably be a whole lot faster, but I'm also gonna play with OB and see what I can get. It can't be any harder than making seamless rollovers with shortcut.dll in LiteStep.

Mei

well I know this post is kinda off topic but I was wondering where bittemei got their wallpaper in the screenshot from? seen the character on it before but never anything else ..also nice looking litestep ...i've used it before just never consistly tho <slight edit> what litestep theme are you using now/in the screenshot?

Hmm, lot's being said here for sure on this taskbar thing. We must all hate our taskbars! We always want to hack it. I'm curious about something though, if the taskbar is a window (see thread posted by me above for explanation if needed) what about the old WindowMetrics key in the registry?

We all know about the MinWidth key which will shorten or lengthen the minimized task on the taskbar. You can have icons ONLY for minimized task, or normal length, or make them longer then that if you wish.

So, if you think about this, the MinWidth entry is not there by default. You have to add it. I learned of it here on VP of course, and it wasn't in the registry when I added it. I don't use it anymore, but I'de have to add it again if I needed it.

So, maybe, there's some sort of undocumented reg entry that could be typed in to apply different size effects, or different effects in general. I'm with Bittemei, I'm fileing this one under the impossible category, but not completely.

I've often thought that if nothing else, you could hide the taskbar, then put the quicklaunch bar on your desktop somewhere, and launch apps from there. You could add folder to it which would serve as pop up menus, or have icons for direct app launch. That way, it truly would be resizable, but not the same look as the taskbar of course. If you did that though, you'de have to roll up your taskbar to access minimized apps I think?

Also, something else to consider. If you look in the registry, somewhere within all the IE and Win Explorer keys, you can find an entry called BackBitmap if you're using a toolbar bitmap. Would that entry work on something else inside the reg?

I tried it a while back on the scroll bar in the WindowMetrics key, but it didn't work. I've forever wanted a skinned scrollbar. It certainly is something that Eppie should have with it. Just to be able to have it a different color would be nice, I don't even have to have a bitmap on it, just a different color, but, oh well.

Off to dig through more files, try something else.

I use start bar fader to hide my taskbar (it gets rid of the annoying white line) and use geoshell as my taskbar. Its not really a hack, but it's easy.

Oh, and how about we remove the text from tasks in XP the way you could do in previous versions? There has to be a way to do it.

JohnnyFist, are you wanting just ICONS ONLY for your minimized task on the taskbar? If so, Tclock 2 will do that for you, or you can go to HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics and insert a STRING value called "MinWidth", without the quotes of course. You can set that value to -250 I think, and that should give you icons only.

-250 was the value I used in 98, should work in XP as well. In fact, for all I know, this registry trick might NOT work for XP, I don't know, but that's the way you do it, if you're wanting to do this. I might have misunderstood you.

@dejitaru - I don't know where I got the wallpaper - I ran a couple of servers way back in the day, it's probably something I found and saved. I've never seen the character before, and I've watched my fair share of anime(two CD-Logic 300 cases full of VCD & AVI) - anyways, if you want a copy I put it here.

The theme in the screenshot is mostly custom - I got the idea for the blue/gray popup from someone else's screenshot, but I ended adding the transparent seperators and the scanlines in the headers - and everything else is custom. I haven't used LS in almost two years, but the XP theme I'm using now is Chrome4XP.
Website Screenshot(not mine)
I'm seriously thinking about porting my old LS skin to ObjectBar, if I do I'll post a link here. :-)

@all: ObjectBar rox. totally.
I've been playing with it since my last post, and am about to go to sleep (6:55AM ET) so I can wake up and play with it some more before the day is over. I tried out some of the sample bar objects, sample menus, and then jumped in to put together a simple bar of my own. JOY! it's like making a custom theme for LS without all of the frustration because X dll is missing Y function. From the limited reading I've had time to do on making objects, SkinStudio supports it, which means the graphics will be easy too.

And my big worry, it being a Stardock product, was that it would be bloated and slow *cough*WindowFX*cough*. It's not, it's actually faster than my normal windows XP menus. I was impressed. Am impressed. whatever.

Mm - some random stuff to be excited about:
Popup menus, or Pop-Out, like say from the side of the screen...
Tear-Off Menus (Yippee!)
As many bars as you like, wherever you like.
Highly flexible (for instance, you can have a shortcut bar that uses categories and tabs.)
ObjectBar commands (I'm assuming something like !.exe for LS)
Oh, and a ton of existing OB themes on wincustomize to browse for inspiration and tricks.

Have a good day, see ya when I wake up!
Mei

Well I'll be, you're an all-nighter like myself. I'm still up, it's 8:30 AM Central time. Going to bed soon, but not too soon.

Seems like OB is impressing you pretty good. You have fallen victim to an application. Now we'll loose a devoted, and enthusiastic tweaker/hacker! No, just kidding.

Really though, it's a shame it's not free. That's the only thing I have a problem with, not to mention a very old and slow computer. Couldn't hack all the graphics, and OB itself running at all times, but one day maybe.

How long is the trial period? 30 days? Fully functional? It seems to be from what you've said so far.

Well, I'm off to hack some more, see ya when I wake up too!

There's an app called TaskbarWallpaper from LinkExe and it actually puts a wallpaper on the taskbar. Its kinda buggy though so....

Mayby we can learn something of it.

Yeah, I've used it, alot, and checked the reg for it also. Couldn't ever figure out what it did. Also, you're right Iamabyte about the bugs. It's very unstable, and not integrated very well either. Doesn't skin the minimized task, nor the clock.

Would be a great app though if it were improved upon.

What about somehow changing the Objects in the webview:
<object id="PieChart" classid="clsid:1D2B4F40-1F10-11D1-9E88-00C04FDCAB92"></object>
I don't know where they are or how to edit them but I think it would be cool to show a different kind of graph or something?
Just an idea.

Yeh, A bar graph or somthing would be nice. /me stabs pie chart.

I looked into that CLSID in the registry:

I found a refrence to WEBVW.dll, not alot of things to change but it does have hard copys of most of the things in the windows/web folder.

Theres a key called \Programmable it has no value. I wonder what it does?

It has a typelib refrence to:
{1d2b4f40-1f10-11d1-9e88-00c04fdcab92}\TypeLib
But I was unable to find that key?

Explicit, good find man. I don't use Webview, but will look into it. I'm gonna copy this information and go hunt something down. I'll let you know if I find anything.

WinT, I didn't think that trick worked on XP and by default, it doesn't. It still leaves the first letter of the task's title in there. As it was explained on this site, its because of XP's task grouping. Anyway, I fired up Style Builder and simply changed the content margins of the tasks from 4 to 8. It works like a charm.

Well I found something kinda cool, you can use the piechart anywhere.

<object
id="PieChart"
classid="clsid:1D2B4F40-1F10-11D1-9E88-00C04FDCAB92">
</object>
<script>
PieChart.displayFile('C:\\')
</script>

Then you can add it to your desktop via Active Desktop Objects.
Link: http://www.milov.nl/forum/1/439

I forgot to mention the OLE info when I explained about the registry entrys, they are:
ThumbCtl

Gonna' use this too look further:
http://www.microsoft.com/com/resources/OVI386.EXE

EDIT:
This is what the OLE viewer shows, go get the viewer and look for your self, maybe we'll find something useful!
http://www3.telus.net/modder/ole_thumbctl.jpg

This OLE viewer might become a very useful tool for us!

One more:

<object id=g classid="CLSID:369303C2-D7AC-11d0-89D5-00A0C90833E6" style="HEIGHT:400; WIDTH:400">
<param name="Line0001" value="SetLineColor(0,0,0)">
<param name="Line0002" value="SetFillColor(255,0,0)">
<param name="Line0003" value="SetFillStyle(1)">
<param name="Line0004" value="Pie(-200,-200,400,400,0,130,0)">
<param name="Line0005" value="SetFillColor(0,255,0)">
<param name="Line0006" value="Pie(-200,-200,400,400,0,100,-130)">
<param name="Line0007" value="SetFillColor(0,0,255)">
<param name="Line0008" value="Pie(-200,-200,400,400,0,130,-230)">
</object>

Side Note:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHDOCVW.dll
Has a bunch of bitmaps to edit!

And lastly, who wants to explain this one:
http://www3.telus.net/modder/scary.jpg

Explicit, you've been hard at work man. Good job, good finds. I'm downloading the OLE viewer as on now. Certainly seems like a good tool to have.

JohnnyFist, I was completely unaware of that tweak being unable to work in XP, I see though that you got it working. Good job.

hmm, gonna try that viewer, looks pretty cool.

Figured I would post here(mainly to tweak WT ) what I did with ObjectBar last night:

TestSS.jpg - I was mostly busy porting over my old theme from LS, I haven't really even gotten started on adding 'cool stuff'.

WT: There you go, your own personal, BROWSEABLE, My Computer, right on the desktop . I think the 'Tasks List' was somebody else's big dream on the old forums, and it is pretty useful .

Doing the bars is pretty simple - doing the skins is a right pain in the @$$!

Off to work I go...
Mei

I am not a programmer. But, in TC2, if there is an option to show just the icons and no text on the taskbar, surely there would be a hack to do the opposite. Text and no icon, cause I am very interested with this idea. I mean you could hack EVERY SINGLE program you run with reshacker and replace the icon with a transparent one,but where is there fun there!!!

Not to mention time consuming TwentyThree. Can you imagine hacking all apps just to get rid of an icon? And of course, you'de have to figure out which one is the one you'de see on a minimized task switch. Not fun at all.

But, I do so badly hate the icons on the minimized tasks. They usually, look horrible. I'de love just text myself. Maybe someone will figure it out, but I wouldn't know where to start, other then to do the above Reshacker technique, and as you said, replace it wiht a transparent one, or erase the icon itself completely.

Bittemei, you're enjoying this aren't you? Throwing this Stardock stuff right in my face, you XP/Stardock lover you! Shame, shame.

No, I'm kidding (obviously). One thing though, even though the screenshot looks nice, the menus look nice, they don't seem to be browseable? You know, submenued. I'de hate to think that you still had to click on the the C:\ icon for example, then browse through explorer. Surely you haven't allowed that to happen have you? LOL

Hmm, maybe the arrows that should be to the right are transparent? I don't know. I can't picture you having a set up like that after all the hacking attempts we made at putting a My Computer menu in the desktop right click, enableing us to browse are systems through menus/submenus. Not Bittemei. No way. There must be something else. LOL

I use Windowsblinds...but I did skin it myself

WT:
I just haven't added the arrows yet. they're skinned in OB, weren't in LS, so I have to decide what they should look like first. But trust me, it's fully browseable, popup style. (It even shows a submenu with "Empty" for empty cd-roms, instead of getting an error

I'll probably end up doing it differently, too - this was just a torn-off menu from my main popup, eventually I'll probably have it as a pop-out menu from the left or right side of the screen.

Skinning is really a pain tho - I can't find a variable listing anywhere(well, in SkinStudio, but it's not complete), and my first attempt at editing a skin failed horribly(gaps everywhere, no transparency) Remember, windows is an app too , hacked or not.

Mei

I'm going to be putting together a web page with all the info on the (possible) Pie Chart hack. It seems I just can't keep it all straight.

And I'm off to mess again.

I'm going to attempt something today, and that is I'm going to download DesktopX again and set it as a shell, and see how much better ram usage I get.

*STARDOCKSTARDOCKSTARDOCK*

MWHAHAHAaaaa.... I don't have any friends.

Also, I'll be switching over to BlackMage soon, so when that nick pops up, it's me

Well, that was fun.
Now I'm less confused, so many numbers!
http://www3.telus.net/modder/Tweak/Pie/
Check it!

Bittemei, I knew you had a browseable menu, I just knew it. And look here at AndyA/Blackmage. Just about to put more Startdock on his machine!

Shame on the both of you. LOL

Explicit, nice info, good job on the pie chart. That is a good find, and for all the Webview users, that should become a standard. Like I said a few post back, I never use it, but alot of others do.

In fact, I think I remember someone on the old VP board asking about that Pie. Can't remember who, but someone did.

Good job on it though.

I'm still trying to find out how to edit it though... So it's not that great yet.

Right now I'm trying to find out how to back up the code before I mess with it, it's just an object for webview so It wont damage Windows or make it unbootable, but I don't want to have it edited and not know what the stock is. I guess I'll just copy it to a .txt...

Oh but it is. It's effort made, and information that folks can use to get to the editing stage. At the rate you're going, you'll have it figured out in no time.

Wow, Explicit, pretty thorough job so far, and hope it will lead to some results. Like WinT, not running webview, but am sure kmr, who is, I think, taking a bit of a - well deserved - rest now, will be when this gets options. Anyway, so I'm just impressed, that's all .

Yea, turns out that you can't edit the IThumbControl parameter set...
Would have been fun but oh well. I think the only way to edit it now is by parameters added to .htt... Because the object itself isn't editable. Maybe something in the registry too.

I was thinking about something guys. On the other desired little hack of having no icons on minimized tasks, I'm willing to place money on the fact that it's a simple registry value that you probably put inside the HKCU/Control Panel/Desktop/WindowMetrics key.

Something like "NoIconsOnTask" or something to that effect. But, I wouldn't even begin to know what you'de put in. Would it be a string value? Dword? Binary? I just don't know. But I bet that's how you'de do it.

If you can adjust the size of minimized task on the taskbar through that key, surely you can tell it to apply no icons from that key? Maybe? Or it might be impossible due to the icons belonging to the software? Therefore having to manualy remove them from the apps using Reshack?

I don't know, but that's the one I'm really wanting to nail. It sounds so simple, but those usually are the hardest ones.

One thing I can say is that there are proggies that simply don't have icons in the taskbar, however, a little thoery is this:

A program sends to windows what to put in the taskbar: name, icon, tooltip, window placement, etc. Now, what we have to figure out, if I'm somehow right, is to take this message and tell windows 'ignore it, man, put it out of memory'

I have more or less came to this conclusion by noticing that there are no other programs nor current reg values supporting this option.

so, more or less, somewhere there is some message being sent that says 'use icon ___ in the taskbar'

To (slightly) change the subject:
Adding custom icons to the IE toolbar is easy. (gpedit.msc, among others.)

Any way to do the same to the WINDOWS explorer toolbar?

WinT and Andya: I would have to think that's how it would be done, any one have any idea how others have found out the registry addons?

Piaqt:
I don't know, because to add them to IE, you need to change a registry setting. Unless you can add that setting to the Windows Explorer and find out where to add the icon effects to the registry. Basically it's a registry game.

The page I found earlier on Web View helped me make this page:
http://www3.telus.net/modder/Tweak/Fade/

Well, great theories here, good ideas. Now, I am SURE that there is some sort of message being sent, no doubt, but I'm also quite sure that there is one simple way to prevent it completely, throughout the OS.

We can have no text, just icons on the taskbar, so, there should be a key/value that could be put in the reg that would have the opposite effect. So, no matter what the message is, the reg command would override it, basically hiding the icon. It would still be there, but we wouldn't see it.

I mean, it makes so much sense to me when I look at something in my imagination like "NoTaskIcons" , and the value would be 1 for no icons, and 0 for normal. I can just see that. It would make perfect sense. I'm sure it's not that easy, as these little things never are, but it would be nice.

Problem is, even if this were to be true, who knows the reg value to type in? If this were the way it is, wouldn't someone have found that by now? Wouldn't that be listed here on VP? It must be something else, as I'm sure it is, but, one can dream.

Allright, Allright - I'll look :-)
----
According to Microsoft, here,

"The window button typically contains the application icon and title. However, if the application does not contain a system menu, the window button is created without the icon."

I tried removing the System Menu with AlphaV, it didn't remove the icon, even though the taskbar button refreshed. I would assume it has to be set when the window is created, since AlphaV modifications don't last when you restart the app you're changing. It includes example code for adding/removing an icon, but it looks to me like it's designed to be called from within the app itself.


Another way it could be partially done, is modify the icon resource that shows up in the taskbar to be blank within common stuff.
This program was designed to replace taskbar icons.

I'll look a little more when I get back from work - any chance of having someone who can code look at that page and tell us wether it needs custom code to be done?

Mei

"since AlphaV modifications don't last when you restart the app you're changing" Nope, you can save properties for the title or type of window.

yeah, you can... but all that does is make AlphaV reapply the settings the next time the window opens. All AlphaV does is modify the window while it's loaded into memory - it doesn't alter the window properties of that app permanently.

IE - if you make changes to a window, save them, then DELETE AlphaV from your system, boom, no more changes. If AlphaV could permanently modify the calls that created the window, then it would be of use here - but it can't.

Mei

I found some interesting stuff at MSDN again. It's info on ActiveX. If you read my on going page about the Pie Graph http://www3.telus.net/modder/Tweak/Pie/

Then you would know that the Pie Chart is an ActiveX component, the object is called ThumbCtl. I went looking into ActiveX because I knew that there can be more parameters too the object than this:

<object id="PieChart" classid="clsid:1D2B4F40-1F10-11D1-9E88-00C04FDCAB92"></object>

An extra parameter such as this:

<param name="Line0001" value="SetLineColor(0,0,0)">

Wihtin the object would edit the object to the parameter specifications.

This page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/components/activex/tutorial.asp

States "An ActiveX control is an object that supports a customizable, programmatic interface. Using the methods, events, and properties exposed by a control, Web authors can automate their HTML pages."

And even the textarea I am typing in right now is an ActiveX component.

This must mean that there are some variables that can be added to the Pie Chart object. I don't know how to find them out but I am searching.

Ok guys. On the taskbar icons thing, I talked with Grigri this morning in IRC. We HAVE to have an app to do this.

There's this thing that I always forget to understand, always forget, but the taskbar is a "toolbarwindow32", it IS an actual window in itself. Grigri explained to me that we would need an app very similiar to Tclock to apply this change globally throughout the entire OS.

He sounded interested in creating one, BUT, he's in the middle of the desktop right click app, and I didn't dare ask him to create yet another app! He' s been working really hard so far, and didn't want to push that by any means. That's what I love about talking to Grigri too. I can't mention one thing that I'de like to do, or that any of us would like to do, without him knowing how to do it! I just hate it requires an app.

Now, here's something interesting. I'm using this app called Power Menu. Qoa sent this to me, and it's a simple shell extension which adds minimize to tray, and priority classes to windows, sort of like XP has, which is default for XP isn't it?

Anyway, I didn't like the icon that would show up in the systray for this extension, so, I ResHacked the icon to show nothing. I deleted the icons found in both the EXE file, and the dll. When the app was fired up afterwards, instead of no icon in the systray, which is what I wanted, it brought out a default app icon, sort of an empty white window with a blue titlebar type of thing.

But, Grigri said that if you hacked the apps which minimize themselves to the taskbar, removed the icon, the icon would NOT show at all on the taskbar.

So, if nothing else, we could hack the apps that we use most. Particularly the ones which are in are screenshots, etc... This would at least provide no icons on the taskswitch for those certain apps. Still a huge pain though for alot of us. I don't ever run much at one time, but I'm more then sure that some of you do.

So, there we have it. A coder/Programmer is needed. Grigri is booked up at the moment, but you just never know about him.

Figures eh...

Yeah, it does doesn't it? It's always that way. Something so simple requires something so complex. It's irritating for sure.

"it doesn't alter the window properties of that app permanently. " - I know.. that sucks huh? .... As for simple things requireing complex tools. That reminds me of changing a spark plug... If you want to change it yourself, you need a sparkplug socket I.e.: a special tool... If you try and do it any other way you will ruin it. Kinna like windows.

Wow, I like that analogy.

Well we do know it's possible, and it is within the programs coding.
See:
http://www3.telus.net/modder/wmp.jpg

I'm starting to think that editing the Pie Chart is an impossibility. I've searched every where to see how to extract parameters from it and can't find parameters online. Anyone know a program that can extract the ActiveX object parameters of an object?

Explicit, did you just hack the exe of WMP with Reshacker to do that? That looks nice, and is really tempting!

Looks good, so much better.

Nope, it's like that already or my system is specialer than yours.

Yey! Specialer!

Stupid ActiveX objects!

Well, I'm running WMP 7, and it HAS an icon in on the taskswitch, and hey, I guarantee you that your system is "specialer" then mine is, not many aren't!

*WinT cries when he turns his system on*

But now why would it already be like that? That's strange.

Well mine is the latest and not necessairly greatest....
I'm running WMP9!

Ah, maybe that's it then. Well, I'm certainly not going to upgrade to 9, as my machine wouldn't like it very much, PLUS, I never use it AT ALL. But, it does make for a nice little screenshot as you've demonstrated.

Yea, I only got it so I could watch video reviews...
The buffer time on it is amazingly fast compared to 7.

Lacking any real sort of life, I thought I'd pose this question:

Would it be possible (and I'm sure it somehow would be) to create an application that would find what resource an object was? Example:

After downloading a new program with a systray icon, I notice it installed many different .dll's in it's directory, all abstractly named and such. This program would do a sort of colorpad 'pickup' and, when I move my mouse pointer over the systray icon, it would display a reshack-like tree of where the resource is, and in what file.

I always thought this would be very useful to find just about every icon or resource we ever wanted to know, and make it much easier to be able to change it. Also, an option could be to run reshack with a command to open the file

I'm sure what you explain is possible, but I don't think it would be worth it for me. I don't want icons in my systray that do things I already was able to do.

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