Velumenous

Former Polk Correctional Chimney

Andrew — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:07:31 +0000

Polk Correctional Chimney

Bug Porn

Andrew — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:26:32 +0000

Flies doing it

Obsessing over an old Taco Bell

Andrew — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:09:32 +0000

Ok, done with that now. I think.

Tulip

Andrew — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:22:51 +0000

Testing the new camera...

Gourd

Andrew — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:05:07 +0000

Teeth

Andrew — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:03:16 +0000

Mosasaur teeth

Setting the Vista Taskbar to Autohide from Delphi 2009

Andrew — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:53:03 +0000

Banged my head against this for quite some time. What I really wanted was a fullscreen app that appeared over the taskbar. While it appears that this is simple in XP, in Vista not so much. However, setting the form’s FormStyle to fsStayOnTop and WindowState to wsMaximized in combination with the code below to turn the Taskbar’s auto hide flag on achieves what I needed, and a bit more pleasantly as well (the Taskbar animates nicely out of the way).

Here’s the code from the FormShow event handler (you’ll need ShellAPI in your ‘uses’ statement):

procedure TMainForm.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
var
  AppBarData: TAppBarData;
  AutoHideOn: boolean;
begin
  //check if autohide on already
  AppBarData.cbSize := SizeOf(AppBarData) ;
  AutoHideOn :=(SHAppBarMessage(ABM_GETSTATE, AppBarData)
       and ABS_AUTOHIDE) > 0;

  OrigTaskBarParam := -1;

  //if it isn't, then we will turn it on temporarily
  if not AutoHideOn then
  begin
    AppBarData.hWnd := FindWindow('SHELL_TRAYWND', nil);
    //we'll also save the user's taskbar settings and
    //restore them to the way they had them when we close
    OrigTaskBarParam := SHAppBarMessage(ABM_GETSTATE, AppBarData);
    //now we'll set it the way we want it
    AppBarData.lParam := LParam(ABS_ALWAYSONTOP or ABS_AUTOHIDE);
    SHAppBarMessage(ABM_SETSTATE, AppBarData);
  end;
end;

Now, to be nice we’re saving the user’s original taskbar settings (before we fucked around with them) in a private field (OrigTaskBarParam) of our form. We’ll use this again in the form’s destroy handler:

procedure TMainForm.FormDestroy(Sender: TObject);
var
  AppBarData: TAppBarData;
begin
  //if we modified this we'll set it back to the original state
  if OrigTaskBarParam <> -1 then
  begin
    AppBarData.cbSize := SizeOf(AppBarData) ;
    AppBarData.lParam := OrigTaskBarParam;
    AppBarData.hWnd := FindWindow('SHELL_TRAYWND', nil);
    SHAppBarMessage(ABM_SETSTATE, AppBarData);
  end;
end;

Head

Andrew — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:11:41 +0000

Head in the Snow

Flower

Andrew — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:01:40 +0000

Orchid

Obama’s Feb. 24th Address to the Nation

Andrew — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:00:56 +0000

Conservative Andrew Sullivan gives us one of the best live blogs of tonight’s address and he ends with the best summary of the speech and what is to come:

“But look: the politics and rhetoric are superb, but all that matters is whether he can pull this off. The results are all that matter now. He has this moment; it could make him and the rest of us. It could destroy him or us. It’s our job in this crisis to support him and to criticize him constructively. We need to rise to the occasion he is rising to. And maybe most of us will.”

Hopefully we will.