IDEA: Window Pop Up on System Tray Icon/Window Title Change

[LEDAdd1ct]

I am not a programmer but have a tremendous amount of respect for them.  I am wondering how hard this would be for someone to make, as I searched around on the web and could not find something to do quite what I wanted.

I use a program called Telegram to keep in touch with family; it seamlessly syncs between Windows, Android, iOS, etc.  When a new message comes in to my father's desktop computer, the little system tray icon changes to a "1" or a "2" or a "3" to indicate however many messages have arrived.  However, while he is decently computer savvy, he often forgets to look in the system tray. 

* * *

Broadly speaking, I was wondering if it would be possible to create a small utility where you select either:

a)  The title of a window

or,

b)  A system tray icon

Then, it would pop up a giant, flashing window, with text that you enter into a little box.  For example, it could say "Check Your Inbox!" or "Check Your Messages!"


When you start the program, it would have a little drop-down dialogue box where you would choose which window(s) you wish to monitor (title bar) or system tray icon.  For each one, you would select whether you wanted a medium or large text box/window with a large font to pop up, flashing, and you would enter text for what you wanted it to say.

1)  How hard would this be to make?

2)  Could a program be written to monitor *both* window titles and the appearance/change in a system tray icon?

[mouser]

window titles are pretty easy to monitor.  i believe system tray icons would be much harder to do.

[LEDAdd1ct]

Thank you for writing.

The system tray is the hard part. 

He will sometimes click the "X" to close the window and it will go down to the tray.

* * *

I don't know if this is helpful or not, but, the Telegram website says the source code is open.

Does that help?

Link


* * *

Another thought:

Perhaps there is a way to make a small program that would disable the program minimizing to the system tray.
Then, when you click to close it, it would simply go down to the taskbar, where it would flash on a new incoming message until clicked on.  Additionally, if it is much easier to make a box pop up when it detects a change in a window title, then it could pop up a very large window, with very large font text, that flashes with text you customize, like "Check Your Telegram Messages Now!" and wouldn't go away until it was purposefully clicked. 

[mouser]

If it's open source, the easiest and best thing would be for someone to modify the program to add the feature you are interested in.

[c.gingerich]

Usually even if there is a system tray icon there is a window for it, just not visible. Do you know if the title of the main window also changed if there are new messages? Like a 1, 2, 3... added to it? If so then just watching for the window title to change should be easy enough to do.