What a shame you feel that way. People are so very helpful here, and I see that some suggestions have been made for you to try.-cranioscopical
I don't disagree that people here are usually helpful. If you'd read the entire thread you'd see that I tried all the suggestions people made, and I appreciate those suggestions, but none of them was an adequate solution.
Perhaps the fact that this code hasn't been written, or doesn't work the way you'd like in other software, implies that it's a little more difficult than you suppose.
Well that may be true, but doesn't the challenge of doing something that someone else tried to do and didn't quite succeed interest anyone? Besides, the author of Taskbar Activate didn't necessarily fail in that he abandoned his project before Windows XP was released, so it may just need a little tweaking to get it to work fully in XP. BTW, I've tried several times to contact the author of Taskbar Activate, but he either isn't receiving email at his published address anymore or he doesn't want to reply.
It's not that it doesn't work the way I'd like in other software. There is no other software other than Taskbar Activate that I've been able to find that even attempts to do specifically what I want it to do. I really don't want to run another program to recreate Windows desktop toolbars that I've already got that work just fine in all other respects except being able to set a variable activation delay. All I want the software to do is allow me to set a variable delay for Windows desktop toolbars, like Taskbar Activate does quite well for the taskbar. I'm not criticizing apps that provide their own custom toolbars, like Mouser's Launchbar Commander. I just don't currently need most of what that software can do, and I'd rather not have any more software running and consuming memory and CPU cycles than necessary, especially if I don't need most of the other capabilities of that software.
Do remember that you're asking for someone to volunteer time to your project. It may well happen, but this is not an 'on demand' type of community. Personally, I look on my own membership here as a privilege. I certainly don't feel that my occasional donations give me any particular entitlement.
I'm aware that it's not "on demand." However, I see that, in a general sense of usefulness to a wide variety of users, many projects have been taken on and completed that would seem to be of use to only a very small number of people. The app I requested is either of more general use or at the least in the same category. Why are some potential coding snack projects embraced while others are totally ignored in terms of at least making an attempt to code the app, since all of them are intended to be freeware anyway?
My wife likes to point out to me that asking nicely is usually preferable to being grumpy.
I think she has a point. 
I did ask nicely back in December and again in February. I'm grumpy now because, other than some suggestions for software I've already tried (see my initial post in this thread) and some that I then tried but found not to be what I'm looking for, I've had no response. Yes, there are other things of value here, and I'm not going to just ignore donation coder, but after seeing all the coding snacks that have been written in the past (including those that very few people would ever need), I never expected that my request would result in nothing. Say hello to your wife for me. She sounds like a very nice person.
Meantime, I hope you do find a solution that suits you. If I come across any software that looks as if it might help you, I'll remember to post about it here in the hope that you will see it.
Thank you. I really do appreciate that, and I wish you luck finding it. I've spent quite a few hours searching, inventing new search queries, and trying out software to find something that I thought surely must already exist. It's a shame Pierre Devigne abandoned Taskbar Activate, since it seems that he's already done most of the work. Maybe if he'd actually released version 2.5 as he states on his apparently abandoned website (
http://pmdevigne.free.fr/), we wouldn't be having this discussion. I've searched the web extensively for Taskbar Activate 2.5, but it doesn't seem to exist. The version I'm using now, 2.4, is available in many places, but 2.5 is a ghost.
Thanks for responding.
