Windows notifications

[andrew at midwestcoastmedia.com]

I am trying to modify a Windows stack to alert the user when a  
particular event happens while the app is in the background or  
minimized. Something like mergNotify, but for Windows, would be ideal.

My first thought was to change the taskbar icon, like Outlook does  
when I have a new email or Skype does to display my status. The forum  
and dictionary proved "set the icon to (some ID)" doesn't work on  
Windows[1], but I could use the still-undocumented "set the statusIcon  
to (some ID)" property[2] to change the system tray icon.

This sort of worked as I was able to make a little repeat loop that  
changed the statusIcon[3] from one image to another and then back  
again to create an attention grabbing area at the bottom of the  
screen. My problem with this is that after the first time that alert  
is acknowledged, via statusIconDoubleClick in this case, any  
subsequent statusIcon changes are only displayed in the "Show hidden  
icons" of the system tray which in essence buries it from the users  
view (until the stack is relaunched). I confirmed this behavior with  
the Sons of Thunder product STSTray[4] which seems to suffer from the  
same problem.

Can anyone suggest a LiveCode native way to alert a Windows user? The  
closest I could find is to use "do as VBScript" with an AppActivate  
command[5], but was hoping for something using LC script directly  
(although this forced me to learn some VBScript and use the "do as  
alternateLanguage" command[6] which were both foreign to me).

  put "Set objShell = CreateObject(" & QUOTE & "Wscript.Shell" & QUOTE  
& ")" into tScript
  put RETURN & "objShell.AppActivate" && QUOTE & "taskbar_icon_demo" &  
QUOTE after tScript
  do tScript as "VBScript"


--Andrew Bell


Links to reference documents:
1 - http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=31278
2 - https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20762
3 - http://livecode.wikia.com/wiki/StatusIcon
4 - http://www.sonsothunder.com/products/ststray/ststray.htm
5 - https://ss64.com/vb/appactivate.html
6 - https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=16652