Trying to see if it's possible to trigger or script based on a Window changing in some way.

Short term / small reason : I want to simply highlight Slack if it updates in anyway to improve visibility since the notifications are not the best. The contents of the window obviously change a little when an update happens since there are unread message tags. But also the taskbar changes as well (windows 10) because it updates the badge with an unread count.

Bigger reason : I think it would be very helpful to combine window changes with the script Thomas wrote "Actively Dim Unfocused Windows" to something that Dims all windows until they have been updated in some way after they are out of focus. Or a non dimming script that just highlights any windows that have been updated since they lost focus. I think it would be helpful on the large screen to see when the windows have been updated. (Outlook, chat apps, network monitors etc.)

I did a handful of searches in the discussion and didn't find an obvious answer.

Thanks for any answers or ideas. -S

Thanks Keith,
Ah. Makes sense but of course disappointing.

Is there any ability to watch for "SetOverlayIcon" that happens on the task bar? From what I understand when nothing is present the value is Null. If there was some way to highlight a window based on the overlay icon being not equal to null maybe?

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd391696%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Unfortunately I am not a real coder so only making some leaps here. If you think it is possible I can try to piece some things together. But if a lost cause .. won't bother.

-S

Hi Keith,
In my continuing efforts to get slack improved i have rounded down a way using powershell to monitor a slack log file and trigger another action. In this case it is just a OK popup.

Can you think of any good way to integrate this idea into DisplayFusion? It would be awesome to have it trigger DF to highlight the slack window or dim everything else or whatever rather then just the OK box I have.

A round-about way is that I could have the PS script execute a process of something that doesn't matter and have DF trigger on that process launch (or end). But that seems clumsy.

This is the PS line.



FYI the browser.log file on slack only adds the NEW_NOTIFICATION item when the window is not in the foreground. Not on every new message.

HI Thomas,
Really appreciate the reply. I tried it out to partial success. When the function initially runs it pops an alert if it sees the search string has appeared since the last time it had the file open.

But ... it won't pop an alert when a new update is made to the file. In order for it to alert again I have to close the function and re-run it.

Along the same line, if the file has not been updated and the function is started it will not pop on any new updates.

Seems like either the file watcher isn't notifying the function of an update on the fly or the function isn't looping properly ?

My understanding of C is a bit rudimentary at best.

Any ideas? I tried making a few changes to the breaks and reviewed things but didn't have any luck yet.

Thanks again -Shawn