{"id":110393,"date":"2024-10-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=110393"},"modified":"2024-10-21T12:51:23","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T19:51:23","slug":"20241021-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20241021-00\/?p=110393","title":{"rendered":"Why does adding WS_MINIMIZE­BOX<\/CODE> change how my window behaves when the user presses Win<\/KBD>+D<\/KBD>?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A customer noticed that if they add the WS_MINIMIZE\u00adBOX<\/code> style to their window, then the IsIconic<\/code> function returns a nonzero value after the user presses Win<\/kbd>+D<\/kbd>. But if they remove the WS_MINIMIZE\u00adBOX<\/code> style, then then the IsIconic<\/code> function always returns FALSE<\/code>. What’s going on?<\/p>\n

We learned some time ago that the Show Desktop command Win<\/kbd>+D<\/kbd> first minimizes all windows that can be minimized, and then moves the desktop window to the top of the z-order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the described behavior is expected: If the window has the WS_MINIMIZE\u00adBOX<\/code> style, then it can be minimized, so the Show Desktop command minimizes it, and the IsIconic<\/code> function reports that the window is indeed minimized. On the other hand, if the the style is missing, then the window cannot be minimized, so the IsIconic<\/code> function reports that the window is not minimized.<\/p>\n

Bonus chatter<\/b>: But why is the function called IsIconic<\/code> when it really reports on whether the window is minimized? Shouldn’t it be called IsMinimized<\/code>? What is an “iconic” window anyway? Is it a window that is widely recognized as representative for its era<\/a>?<\/p>\n

No. The reason is simple: Before the taskbar was invented, minimized windows were represented by an icon<\/a>. So the name “is iconic” was correct at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It minimizes your window if it can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-110393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

It minimizes your window if it can.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}