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Chrome "apps"
http://forums.winstep.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11188
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Author:  xpusostomos [ Tue Nov 26, 2019 5:54 am ]
Post subject:  Chrome "apps"

When you use the Chrome feature: More Tools -> Create Shortcut -> open as window - yes to create a "pseudo app", that icon behaves mostly like a real app. In Windows task bar, it is grouped by itself. If you minimise it, then click it in the task bar, it opens the same window again.

In Winstep Nexus, it doesn't seem to be able to maintain that illusion. If you minimise it, it gets grouped with Chrome. If you click the icon again, instead of opening the window, it opens a new separate window.

Is this a bug, or a technical limitation or what?

Author:  winstep [ Tue Nov 26, 2019 7:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Chrome "apps"

Technical limitation, sort of.

When Microsoft first came up with the 'group taskbar buttons' feature back in the Windows XP days (IIRC) to reduce taskbar clutter, it did so in a clever way: windows are grouped into the same taskbar button if they belong to the same executable.

This way all Chrome windows are grouped together, all Notepad windows also, etc, etc...

With Windows 7 they started extending the functionality of the Windows taskbar itself so that other applications can communicate with it and tell it which windows should be grouped together, which not, etc...

This is all very fine and handy, but in typical Microsoft fashion they did not provide any API that would allow 3rd party applications to 'listen in' in these 'conversations' and thus know which windows should and should not be an exception.

Thus, Winstep applications are forced to keep on doing it the old fashioned way: grouping windows that belong to the same executable. Since Chrome apps are all spawned by the same executable as the browser, they too are grouped together.

I once looked at this to see if I could open an 'exception' for Chrome apps but, at least at the time, Google did not provide any way to positively identify a window as an app, instead of a regular browser window.

Hope that makes sense.

Author:  xpusostomos [ Tue Nov 26, 2019 8:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Chrome "apps"

Ahh, I thought it must be something like that. A couple of suggestions...

* Could Winstep Nexus at least keep track of it if it was launched by Nexus in the first place? I suspect not, but my other suggestion...

* Chrome pseudo apps are launched by chrome_proxy.exe. As far as I see, this program is like 20 lines of code...: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/bl ... ain_win.cc

Now if you hacked this code to do what you need, and then gave the user a utility to convert their chrome shortcuts to use a nexus_chrome_proxy.exe instead, maybe you could work around it.

Author:  xpusostomos [ Tue Nov 26, 2019 1:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Chrome "apps"

One other thing. Actual Window Manager:
https://www.actualtools.com/windowmanager/

Has an option in the settings: taskbar -> Replace the system taskbar.

When you select that the windows taskbar disappears and the built in AWM one appears.

This AWM taskbar seems capable of splitting apart Chrome "pseudo apps" and grouping them together (albeit it doesn't display the icons correctly). I have no idea how it does it, but you might want to take a look.

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