Write Text message to Desktop (VB6 or VB Net)

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Anyone know of a way to write a changing message to the windows desktop.
I want to be able to write a simple Daily count down timer, that will be placed
as text on the windows desktop.

e.g. There are n days to.

Message changes daily and ideally it would be nice to choose location.

I can do this by altering a desktop icon shortcut, but it would be nice to do it
another way.

I found a simple .exe that can do this, but if anything moves over the message it gets wiped
and that is no good, and the .exe did not come with the script to hack.

Any ideas or pointers to information gratefully accepted.
Alternatively NO is just as good.
I am sure it can be done though, because things like desktop calendars do it.

Andrew

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Andrew

Not VB but a possible solution with a twist.

How about an HTML page with some back ground javascript that counts down for you. You could place the page on the local PC or a server somewhere and link it using active desktop.

The example attached is counting down to 20/3/2007…….code can be changed

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Thanks, good idea
I’ll try out the principle.
Some don’t want active desktop though,
so I’m still open to other solutions

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fairy nuff

A good few years back, I created a simple batch file that appended a shortcut to the startup folder of a users PC. This was a shortcut to a URL that opened up the “Corporate News Letter”…OK this was web based again but you could shortcut to a text file or pdf with some news…..Obviously the file has to be quite small so as not to slow access to networks…

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I think we had a thread on changing the wallpaper on the desktop. The problem was that the poster could get a new filename into the registry, but Windows didn’t immediately read the changed file name and update the desktop. At least I think that’s what it was…

Our IT department uses a utility that runs at start up and creates a wallpaper of system information. Not very attractive! But perhaps it is adaptable to your purposes? Sorry, I have no idea what it’s called.

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Thanks for HTML suggestions and Active Desktop.
For a simple POST IT type message it worked fine, although I would love to be able to disable the window Border on the
Page that POPs up. You can set the size manually, but that would be nice to.
Reckon that will require some API calls and a seperate .exe to run at startup, and for my purpose it isn’t worth the effort at the moment.
BUT.. If anyone knows a routine!

I used the HTML page a nd some embedded Javascript as below to get what I wanted.
Just in case anyone else is interested.
The Page is pointed to as one of the Pages to start on the Active Desktop settings of Customize desktop.
I set the size manually after it had loaded the first time.

The code I used is in the attached text file countdownhtml.txt
I had to put it here because the message board was trying to use the html

Thanks for suggestions and ideas.

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If you change the file extension to hta instead of html then your window comes without the usual IE toolbars.

If you want to go the whole way and hide the usual application borders and resize/reposition the window to the middle of the screen then you might want to have a play with this attached version. I included an exit button to kill the screen since you would be making it difficult for the users to kill this otherwise – perhaps you don’t want this.

I believe that this solution won’t work if the user doesn’t have IE on the machine but I haven’t got a non-IE enabled machine to test this.

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Thanks.
I will have a play with this.
Machines do have IE on, but the default browser is Firefox 1.5
I’ll see how it goes.
As it is at the moment, I do not see normal toolbars anyway.
Just the window frame, and only if I click inside it.

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