Another System Tray question

[Ryanshirt]

Hi volks,

 

I'm working on an Word Add-In, with VSTO2005. Well no problems so far.

What I want to do is :

 

When the user installs the Add-In, an Icon should apear in the System Tray and stay there. And every time the user restarts the computer, the Icon should apear again. Should I make a Windows Service that starts automaticly or what ?

 

Is there a better why to do that ? If so, how ?

 

This is just a "nice to have" thing, so I am only intrested in 5 min. solutions. But if its realy good, I accept also 10 min solutions.

 

Thanks !

[dynamic_sysop]

if you want a 5 or 10 min thing, why not run the add-in on windows startup via the appropriate registry key?

eg: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

add your application in the list there, as you probably already know, you can specify if it's hidden etc... / how to start it.

[Wraith]

Two things:

 

One. Services should not interact with the desktop or a user directly. If you need to communicate with a service in some way you should put in a way to do so such as networking, pipes or remoting. The fact that you considered a service for this purpose is bad. Be very careful.

 

Two: Tray icons are great when they're for a program you use all the time. On the other hand very little will annoy a user more than programs adding their own tray icon presence without asking and without a simple way to stop it happening. If you're going to add a tray icon then you need to as the user when they install. You also need to provide a very simple way to remove it.