Using Windows 7 taskbar features in PyQt

Question

I am looking for information on the integration of some of the new Windows 7 taskbar features into my PyQt applications.

Specifically if there already exists the possibility to use the new progress indicator (see here) and the quick links (www.petri.co.il/wp-content/uploads/new_win7_taskbar_features_8.gif).

If anyone could provide a few links or just a "not implemented yet", I'd be very grateful.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

As quark said, the functionality is not in Qt 4.5, but you can call the windows API directly from Qt. Its a little bit of work though.

1. The new taskbar API is exposed through COM, so you can't use ctypes.windll . You need to create a .tlb file to access the functions. Get the interface definition for ITaskbarList from this forum post , or from the windows SDK. Save it to a file called e.g. TaskbarLib.idl .

2. Create the .tlb file. You'll probably need the Windows SDK, or get an IDL compiler from somewhere else.

   midl TaskbarLib.idl /tlb TaskbarLib.tlb
   

3. Load the .tlb (you need the Win32 Extensions for Python, http://python.net/crew/skippy/win32/Downloads.html):

   import comtypes.client as cc
   cc.GetModule("TaskbarLib.tlb")
   

4. Create the TaskbarList object. The function for setting the progress bar is in the interface ITaskbarList3:

   import comtypes.gen.TaskbarLib as tbl
   taskbar = cc.CreateObject(
       "{56FDF344-FD6D-11d0-958A-006097C9A090}",
       interface=tbl.ITaskbarList3)
   

5. Now you can call the API functions:

   taskbar.HrInit()
   taskbar.SetProgressValue(self.winId(),40,100)
   

Here's a complete example script. Sources: 1 2