IDEA: application independant status tray icon

[Bert36]

Hi there,

I am looking for a way to display on-screen (in a very inconspicuous way) what function I have assigned to the button of my pen on a wacom graphics tablet. I only have 1 button on this pen and I change the function assigned to it by means of AutoIt scripts. But I would like some visual feedback so I can actually see what function is assigned at any time.
I was thinking along the lines of a tray-icon that changes color or shape. Probably best way to do this is to have the tray-icon change color by means of a commandline option which one can easily program into an AutoIt script.
So, effectively I am looking for a "status-led" that I can set to any color I want at will.

Hope someone is interested in this.

[jgpaiva]

I'm not familiarised with auto-it, but from what i know of autohotkey, there should be some instruction to change the icon of the script you use to change that button's function.

[Bert36]

Thanks for the reply.

That maybe so, but the problem is, that the script icon disappears once the script has finished. Obviously I want a permanent status indicator.

[jgpaiva]

Only now did i understand what you want. Right, that makes all sense.
Here's the code in autohotkeys to do what you ask for:

[Select]

#persistent
#singleinstance

Menu, tray, icon, %1%,1
return

If you'd like to run it, just download ahk from www.autohotkey.com. (if you prefer, i could compile it and post the .exe).

All you have to do is call it with an argument. That argument has to be the name of the icon you'd like to use. To change the icon, just run it again with a new parameter, the old version will be closed.

[mouser]

Here is what I was writing but before i could post it jgp came up with a better solution 

This is actually a great idea for a tiny little generic program.
May I suggest a program named GenericTrayIconDisplayer.exe which runs in the tray.
Ideally written in something lightweight and efficient but could be done with anything.
It has only one job, which is to listen for a Windows Message Broadcast telling it what Icon File to load and display.

So that you would run this tool, and it just sits there until some other program or script broadcasts a message to it saying "Go load C:\myicon1.ico", at which point it loads it.

[Bert36]

Thanks jpg,

I'll see if I can find this functionality in AutoIt, if not I might take you up on you exe-offer :-)
And mouser, I agree with you, I think something like a small program (or maybe object) like this could benefit some programmers and users.