How To Hide A Window in TaskBar

Introduction

Sometimes we may want to make an app which doesn't actually need an annoying box in the taskbar. I hope this snippet will help.

Steps

1. Global Declaration

   Here is some short explanation about the interface used:

   • DECLARE_INTERFACE(iface) is used to declare an interface that does not derive from a base interface.
   • DECLARE_INTERFACE_(iface, baseiface) is used to declare an interface that does derive from a base interface. This is the one that is used. And the interface will be derived from IUnknown interface.

   And then, let's create an alias definition for the derived interface.

   DECLARE_INTERFACE_(ITaskbarList,IUnknown)
   {
   STDMETHOD(QueryInterface)(THIS_ REFIID riid,LPVOID* ppvObj) PURE;
   STDMETHOD_(ULONG,AddRef)(THIS) PURE;
   STDMETHOD_(ULONG,Release)(THIS) PURE;
   STDMETHOD(ActiveTab)(HWND) PURE;
   STDMETHOD(AddTab)(HWND) PURE;
   STDMETHOD(DeleteTab)(HWND) PURE;
   STDMETHOD(HrInit)(HWND) PURE;
   };
   //alias
   typedef ITaskbarList *LPITaskbarList;

2. In the Dialog Based Class declaration

   Here is up to you, whether you want to declare the pTaskbar as an attribute of a Dialog class or not. It's not a problem, actually, since the implementation (next step) will only need the window handle (HWND).

   class CMyDlg : public CDialog
   {
   .
   .
   //Init our Taskbar handler
   LPITaskbarList pTaskbar;
   .
   .
   }

   Don't forget to set the pTaskbar to NULL in the construction method for your dialog class.

3. Initialization

   BOOL CMyDlg::OnInitDialog()
   {
   .
   .
   //initializes the Component Object Model(COM)
   CoInitialize(0);
   //We call below function since we only need to create one object
   CoCreateInstance(CLSID_TaskbarList,0, 
     CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,IID_ITaskbarList,(void**)&pTaskbar);
   //Below function will initialize the taskbar list object
   pTaskbar->HrInit(this);
   .
   .
   .
   }

4. Implementation

   This is the function that you can use to hide the "box" in taskbar.

   void CMyDlg::DeleteTaskbar()
   {
   //Hide it
   pTaskbar->DeleteTab(this);
   }

Try the other methods for pTaskbar, and you will experience some stuff.

Forgive me if this article doesn't explain much. My purpose is just to provide another alternative. Since this "way" hasn't been posted yet.