With "popup notification balloons" turned on: If you continously double click tracks, every time a new baloon appears near system tray, but they don't disappear automatically: You have to click on them as many times, as you have opened tracks...

I'm on w2ksp3, latest fb2k/columnsUI dll

Did you really double click on 99 tracks ?

Yes, as far as I know its some inconsistency in the behaviour of ballon tips between win 2k & xp. It should be fixed for the next version of columns ui.

Hrm, Windows Me should support balloon tips. I wonder why utf8api doesn't recognise that, maybe someone doesn't like Windows Me

Balloon tooltips require Shell32.dll v5.x, and the NIIF_NOSOUND flag requires v6.x. Currently, utf8api detects Windows 2000+ and assumes that the correct version is present. You can change it to check with Shell32's DllGetVersion export on load, storing the required version number in a static variable for later use, then initialize the NOTIFYICONDATA size member accordingly, as suggested here, if you really care that much about Windows 9x/ME.

Hmm, I remember it was 72 times...

Uploaded a modified utf8api.dll set, archived here. I doubt that balloon tips will work in Windows 98/ME with IE 5/6 installed, but you can try anyway. uGetLongPathName might also work on Win95/NT4 now as well, but I doubt many of the other elements of the player will work so smoothly. Why bother to support that old crap anyway? Heheheh.

Hopefully it wasn't a total waste. :B

Heh, I wasn't execting you to do that

Balloon tips should work fine on Windows Me, it ships with shell32.dll version 5.0 after all. Shame I dont have Windows Me available to test.

I see no reason for it to work on a "normal" win 98, since the most you would get out of IE 5.5 is version 4.72.

Well, the definition is _WIN32_IE, which I was lamely guessing might apply to shell versions shipped with IE itself as well as the stock copy. Once again, I have no idea.

If I get really bored, I may assemble a partition and fire up VMWare or VirtualPC or something, to see if installing IE 6 in Windows 98 SE updates the shell.

Oh, and the uShellNotifyIconEx in that version will display just a plain tooltip limited to 63 characters of text if it can only find v4 or older. You might want to keep that in mind when assembling the tip parameter. Of course, this only applies to my changes, where the function actually works to some degree on 9x systems.

I'd be interested in reports of how well this functions on 9x/ME systems, if at.

Hi, just wanted to say that it worked in my ME system.
I´ll try to check, later, how it perform on w98SE+IE6 at the work.

I hope to see more people sending feedback about this modification so it could be added to the official pack (since peter agrees).

To anyone interested, there´s a new address to get the file.

Kode, w98/me are included on this warnning ? Does this mean that it´s more a hack than a fix ? what functions should I try to check possibles non smooth behaviours ?

edit: added questions to kode54

Nice to hear that it wasn't entirely in vain.


This would be interesting to know.


I'll see what I can do about this.


Sorry about that. I've changed my original post to the correct link now.


This is merely a function already wrapped by utf8api, first implemented in Windows 98, and later in Windows 2000, and all versions since. However, it is not supported by Windows 95 or NT 4. newapis.h, part of the Platform SDK, provides emulation wrappers for a few functions which did not exist in those early versions of Windows, and support is probed dynamically the first time the function is used.

Whee, in fewer words, this has no effect on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, but may make the player work on Windows 95 or NT4... but I doubt it.

MSDN says no: IE6 updates Shlwapi.dll (and I guess Comctl32.dll with the same version than IE5). IE4 updates shell32 to 4.71 in w95/NT only if "integrated Shell" was chosen.

It worked here in w98 too: shell32 4.72.

With normal utf8api.dll, tray only shows "Foobar2000 v0.8.3" all the time when the mouse is over it. Now, with your modification, once a music starts, hovering the mouse shows a plain tooltip with it´s name.

Can´t test w95 any time soon.