How to write applications that modifies the Windows UI?

Posted by StevenGilligan on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by StevenGilligan
Published on 2010-06-02T01:29:08Z Indexed on 2010/06/02 1:33 UTC
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Windows

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shell

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desktop

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windows-desktop-gadgets

Hi,

I have this programming question that's been bothering me for some time now. I'm wondering how is it possible to write applications that change the Windows UI? More precisely how could you write an application that modifies the Windows Taskbar or the Windows Desktop? I'm really interested in this topic but cannot find a lot of information. I've read about extending the Windows Shell but I can't seem to find anything related to modifying the Taskbar and the Desktop.

I'm looking for something along the lines of Rainmeter. How did those guys create an application that lives inside the Windows Desktop?

I'd like to point out that my prefered language for this would be C# but if you want to give me hints in other languages I'm fine with it and I am running on Windows 7.

Thank you

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