[fpc-pascal] Want to create a program launcher for Windows 11, suggestions please.

[Rolf Wetjen]

I just updated an old windows 10 deskband implementation for this to use 
it with Windows 11.

Its not a 100% replacement for a deskband but it's fine for me.

https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,72243.0.html

Rolf

Am 08.09.2025 um 23:03 schrieb Bo Berglund via fpc-pascal:
> On Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:46:06 +0200, Bo Berglund via fpc-pascal
> <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 8 Sep 2025 09:50:10 -0500, Hairy Pixels via fpc-pascal
>> <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sep 8, 2025 at 9:18:42?PM, Bo Berglund via fpc-pascal <
>>> fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have written a good many Windows appliocations using Lazarus/FreePascal
>>>> but I
>>>> have never gone into these Windows internals before...
>>>>
>>>> Grateful for any help!
>>>>
>>> I was curious so I put your question into ChatGPT and got some answers that
>>> looked interesting. I’ve barely done any Windows development so I don’t
>>> know the internals but I found ChatGPT to be really good for this kind of
>>> research.
>>>
>>> Sorry that’s a cheap answer :)
>> I too was using ChatGPT as helper during my conversion to Win11.
>> When I discovered that the solution that resulted did not work for me and
>> mentioned this fpc idea for a replacement it came back with a long Lazarus/Fpc
>> suggestion. :-)
>>
>> But I thought that asking here would be a safer way...
>> Before I go further I need to make sure I have a working Lazarus/FPC
>> installation on my Windows11 machine. In recent years I have done the bulk of my
>> new coding on Linux platforms...
>>
>> I have used FpcUpDeluxe the last times I installed on Windows and that gave me
>> Lazarus 3.4 so I just have to find its launcher. All of my day-to-day programs
>> were launched from the QuickLaunch toolbar Microsoft has decided to remove...
> So going onwards now, what happens if I have a form and there is a mouse event
> when one drags a shortcut icon from the Windows desktop amd drops it onto the
> form? Of course it must remain on the desktop too...
>
> Say I dragged the Lazarus 3.4 icon to the form and dropped it, will there be
> some way to extract what it was that was dropped and then extract the built-in
> icon image so it could be placed on the form?
> Can the application launch information also be extracted in this case (name and
> path to the executable and any arguments).
> If so how is it done?
>
> I want to create an image to drop onto my form which displays the actual
> application icon.
> And it will have an on-click event handler which would launch the application on
> click.
>
> So the main issues here are:
> - How to extract the icon image?
> - how to extract the shortcut target (path to application and any arguments
> needed)
>
> If I can get that I can probably create my own application launcher similar to
> the now removed Windows Quick Launch Toolbar.
>
> Of course I could create a simpler application with an ini file config where the
> application path is supplied there and the data extraction then becomes
> simnpler.
> It would be nice with the drag-drop though in order to populate the launcher.
>
>