TrayBlank 1.8
Published
Version 1.8 of TrayBlank fixes a few things that have been bugging me about version 1.7, including a bug that is still bugging me now that it is fixed. It really is fixed though.
The changes all affect the way TrayBlank behaves when the screensaver is not set - in other words, when the “Screen saver” drop-down in the Control Panel's “Screen saver Settings” dialog is set to “(None)”. Now when TrayBlank finds that the screensaver is not set its “Start screensaver” and “Configure screensaver” menu options are greyed out, and the progress bar showing the time until the screensaver starts is not shown.
The text in the tooltip is clearer now too - it was a bit muddled before, but now the name of the screensaver and the timeout are displayed on separate lines, or there will be a message telling you the screensaver is not set.
The bug that is fixed is a broken balloon tooltip that is shown when you try to start or configure the screensaver when there is none set. (The menu options are greyed out, but the hotkeys are still active and you could still double-click on the TrayBlank icon). The balloon tip was working from Windows XP up to Windows 7 (I think) but not on Windows 8 to Windows 10. It should now work on all these versions of Windows.
The reason it is still bugging me is that Windows 10 has changed the way balloon tips work. Instead of a balloon pointing to the icon you get a “Toast notification” - a rectangular popup window in the corner of the screen containing the message text. The reason it is bugging me is that they don't pop up immediately - there can be quite a delay before it appears. I might have to come back to this in the next version and do something to make the message appear straight away, because it is quite annoying.
The only other change of any significance is that this version is compiled using Visual Studio 2017 and without my attempts to squeeze it into the smallest size possible. This means that TrayBlank 1.8 is about five times the size of version 1.7, even though there is very little new code. It is still quite small though.
The new version is available from the downloads page.