Question

How can I have my application minimize itself to the system tray in WindowsXP/Vista?

I’m also looking for a way to have a message display itself when the mouse is hovered on the icon. Is it possible to have two lines in the pop up balloon?

Answer 1

I assume you mean minimize to the System tray because you have talked about icons and message ballons?

The following code will set up a tray icon:

private void SetUpTrayIcon()
{
    notifyIcon = new System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon();
    notifyIcon.BalloonTipText = "Ballon minimize text";
    notifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = "Ballon minimize title";
    notifyIcon.Text = "Icon hover text";
    notifyIcon.Icon = new  System.Drawing.Icon(
               System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
                   .GetManifestResourceStream("MyIcon.ico"));
    notifyIcon.Click += new EventHandler(HandlerToMaximiseOnClick);
}

To show the icon in the tray (you may want to do this on the window state change event for example, do something like the following:

if (notifyIcon != null)
{
    notifyIcon.Visible = true;
    notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(2000);
}

To display a ballon on mouse hover you want to use the same code as above possibly in the mousemove for the icon.

Note: ShowBalloonTip is overloaded if you want to change the message at different points. The message the balloon displays will respect newlines eg Environment.NewLine can be added to it.