Delphi form minimise issue

Question

I currently have a delphi 7 project sitting in front of me and what the original creators of the software have done is used the main form as a launch pad for another form which contains the actual controls and logic behind the entire application. So basically, form1 loads up, is set to invisible and another form (the form with all the UI controls and logic) is created and shown, its a strange way to do things, but its the way they did it.

Now I'm not familiar with the way delphi 7 handles its forms, but this second window, the window with all the controls on, whenever i click the minimise button, the form does not drop down to the taskbar as one would expect, but rather, resizes so that only the minimise, maximise and close buttons are visible and then places itself at the bottom left of the screen, just above the start menu.

the creation of this second window is:

frmPlatform := TfrmPlatform.Create(frmMain);
ModalResult := frmPlatform.ShowModal;

where frmMain is the invisible form.

My question is, why does the second window not minimize as one would expect and drop to the taskbar? and how do i get it to work,

thanks

Answer 1

Standard behaviour of forms I'm afraid as the mainform is by default the only form shown by Delphi on the taskbar. You can however set other forms to appear on the taskbar as well:

procedure TForm1.CreateParams
   (var Params: TCreateParams);
begin
  inherited CreateParams(Params);
  Params.ExStyle := Params.ExStyle
                    or WS_EX_APPWINDOW;
end;

And you can hide your current main form of course as well, see: http://delphi.about.com/od/adptips1999/qt/hidefromtaskbar.htm, and http://delphi.about.com/od/delphitips2008/qt/hide_taskbutton.htm for D2007 and up.