ok heres my problem: i want to have my form dock on the desktop so
that it is docked on the top of the screen. it would be the total
width of the screen but only the height of, say, a single line
textbox. that is the easy part.
i want this form to not only be on top all the time but have all other
windows use it like it is the border of the desktop. i want to mold
the entire desktop to this new dimension so that it being on the top
of the screen will not affect other windows by blocking them out when
they are maximized.
does anyone know how that can be done? i would love the help. thanks!
-ryan

Hi Ryan,

i want to have my form dock on the desktop so that
it is docked on the top of the screen. it would be
the total width of the screen but only the height
of, say, a single line textbox.

The functionality you're looking for is called a "deskbar". There is a
sample for this functionality on Eduardo Morcillo's (Edanmo) Site:

I don't recall the location off the top of my head, but if you dig
around in his shell code for "deskbar" you'll find it. English is a
second language for him, so the samples are sometimes sporadically
detailed in Spanish, instead of English. Even so, anytime I need shell
code of any kind, his is the site I go to.

Is your form actually going to be a single-line textbox? Can it be
implemented in a command-line of sorts? is it intended to interact
with a website (it doesn't have to, but it can)? If so, consider looking
at DQSD (or add the functionality of your application to it) as an
alternative:
http://www.dqsd.net/
A new beta (4.0 beta 3) was released yesterday which makes it work
better for Vista and Windows XP. Easily half of the applications I wrote
within VB6 were able to be rewritten/converted to inline processing
within DQSD to take up less space and be accessible from any moment. You
really just have to use DQSD to understand how powerful it is. Look at
the "vbsx" and "qscb" searches to see VB code made to work in that
environment.

These days, instead of my first thought being VB to fix a problem, I
first consider if it can be accomplished in DQSD. Most things can.

Regards,

Shawn K. Hall
http://12PointDesign.com/