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How to Implement Tooltips for Status Bar Icons

  • Article

A nonintrusive way to display an explanatory message for a status bar icon is to implement a tooltip. The tooltip disappears when clicked, but you can also specify a time-out value.

What you need to know

Technologies

Prerequisites

  • C/C++
  • Windows User Interface Programming

Instructions

Implement Tooltips for Status Bar Icons

The following code fragment illustrates how to add a balloon tooltip to a status bar icon.

#define ARRAYSIZE(a) (sizeof(a)/sizeof(a[0]))

NOTIFYICONDATA IconData = {0};

IconData.cbSize = sizeof(IconData);
IconData.hWnd   = hwndNI;
IconData.uFlags = NIF_INFO;

HRESULT hr = StringCchCopy(IconData.szInfo, 
                           ARRAYSIZE(IconData.szInfo), 
                           TEXT("Your message text goes here."));

if(FAILED(hr))
{
  // TODO: Write an error handler in case the call to StringCchCopy fails.
}
IconData.uTimeout = 15000; // in milliseconds

Shell_NotifyIcon(NIM_MODIFY, &IconData);

Remarks

For a detailed discussion of the status bar, see The Taskbar.

To display a balloon tooltip, you need to set the NIF_INFO flag in the NOTIFYICONDATA structure, and use the szInfo and uTimeout members to specify the tooltip text and time-out duration.

Using Tooltip Controls