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Introduction

Say we have a process that takes a lot of time to complete - wouldn't it be helpful to add a NotifyIcon control (hidden from our main form, so we do not bother the user until we are done) to show the progress in the system tray Icon area? Here is a simple code to achieve this, by drawing some text in the application system tray Icon dynamically.

Using the code

1. Click File -> New -> Project. Create a ChangeIcon Visual C# Windows Application Project
2. Click View -> Toolbox.
3. From the Toolbox, drag a ContextMenu item into the Form1 form.
4. Click in the Context Menu menu item, appearing at top of the form, change Type Here, with &Show. Press Enter.
5. Double-click the newly created Show menu item.
6. Change the menuItem1_Click method with:

Double-click the startButton button. Replace the startButton_Click method with:

private void menuItem1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
   {
      this.Show();
   }

1. From the Toolbox, drag a NotifyIcon into the Form1 form.
2. Right Click the NotifyIcon1 NotifyIcon -> Properties. Set the property name to trayIcon. Click in the Icon property, push the button which appears next to it, and browse for the App.ico within the Wizard created ChangeIcon folder. Finally, set the ContextMenu property to contextMenu1.
3. From the Toolbox, drag a ProgressBar into the Form1 form. Set the Dock property to Top.
4. From the Toolbox, drag a Button into the Form1 form. Change the text property to Start, and the name to startButton.
5. From the Toolbox, drag another Button into the Form1 form. Change the text property to Hide, and name to hideButton.
6. From the Toolbox, drag a Timer to the form.

Double-click the startButton button. Replace the startButton_Click method with:

private void startButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
  {
    //

    timer1.Enabled = true;
    startButton.Enabled = false;
    //

    progressBar1.Value = progressBar1.Minimum;
    progressBar1.Step = 1;
  }

Double-click the hideButton button. Replace the hideButton_Click method with:

private void hideButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
   {
       this.Hide();
   }

Double-click the Timer1 timer. Replace the timer1_Tick method with:

private void timer1_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
   {
      if (progressBar1.Value == progressBar1.Maximum)
      {
      timer1.Enabled = false;
      startButton.Enabled = true;
      }
      else
      {
      //

      progressBar1.PerformStep();
      //

      string text = "Ok";
      if (progressBar1.Value != progressBar1.Maximum)
         text = progressBar1.Value.ToString();
      //

      System.Resources.ResourceManager resources = new 
          System.Resources.ResourceManager(typeof(Form1));
      Bitmap bmp =( (System.Drawing.Icon)(resources.GetObject
          ("trayIcon.Icon"))).ToBitmap();

      // Create an ImageGraphics Graphics object from bitmap Image

      System.Drawing.Graphics ImageGraphics = 
          System.Drawing.Graphics.FromImage(bmp);

      // Draw random code within Image

      System.Drawing.Font drawFont = new System.Drawing.Font
          ("Arial Narrow", 20, FontStyle.Regular);
      System.Drawing.SolidBrush drawBrush = new System.Drawing.SolidBrush
          (System.Drawing.Color.Blue);
      //

      System.Drawing.StringFormat drawFormat = 
          new System.Drawing.StringFormat();
      ImageGraphics.DrawString(text,drawFont, drawBrush, -2, 1, drawFormat);
      //

      // Dispose used Objects

      //

      drawFont.Dispose();
      drawBrush.Dispose();
      ImageGraphics.Dispose();
      //

      trayIcon.Icon = Icon.FromHandle(bmp.GetHicon());
      trayIcon.Text = text;
    
      }
   }

Finally, press (F5). That's it!

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Very Clever Pat Tormey 2:35 12 Aug '08   Hey Rodolfo, That was very clever getting text info into the icon. Gave me some good ideas! Thanks Pat in New Hampshire USA Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink FromHandle to Grave... steve_nenorse 11:11 17 Mar '07   Hi Dude, Check out this http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/safeicon.asp by Joshua Flanagan on safely creating Icons in .net - I recently wrote an app that creates a graph image (icon GDI+) on the tooltray, but using FromHandle was giving me memory problems - usually intermittently after around 10,000 instantiations - Josh's excellent article explains it all and got me out of a world of pain. Ending is better than mending. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink It's been a while... Colin Angus Mackay 12:17 9 Mar '07   It's been a while since I did much with GDI graphics (7 years) but don't you need to dispose of the old icon once you are done with it? I mean that when you assign the new icon to the NotifyIcon object you don't dispose of the old one. You just assign the new icon. The old icon surely needs to be disposed. Upcoming events: * Edinburgh: Web Security Conference Day for Windows Developers (12th April) * Glasgow: AJAX, SQL Server, Mock Objects My: Website | Blog | Photos Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5 Re: It's been a while... Ed.Poore 9:02 10 Mar '07   It'll be disposed of eventually by the Garbage Collector, but there's no guarantee of when it will occur.  By calling the Dispose method you're signalling that it can be got rid of ASAP, otherwise the Garbage Collector has to figure out if it's safe to destroy. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 1.50/5

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