Balloon Pop-ups and Toaster Pops

Recently I was looking into balloons, toaster-pops, and general system tray messages.  There's nothing much WPF gives you out of the box to give you a leg up. So I turned to Google to search for either code samples or control libraries.  I found a fantastic free open-source all-in-one framework for all things balloons, system-tray and toaster-pops.

Check it out here:
http://www.hardcodet.net/projects/wpf-notifyicon

So it looks cool, but how hard is it to make a quick and dirty sample application that shows a custom balloon pop-up out of the system tray? (and yes it follows the tray if you move your task bar).

1. Create a new WPF project and reference the one Hardcodet.Wpf.TaskbarNotification DLL.
2. Add this code to the MainWindow.Xaml
   

   <TextBlock Text="Wait 5 seconds for the ring balloon popup to appear." />
   <tb:TaskbarIcon x:Name="tb" VerticalAlignment="Top" Visibility="Hidden" />

3. Add this to the code behind:
   

   private DispatcherTimer timer;
   
           public MainWindow()
           {
               InitializeComponent();
               Loaded += OnLoaded;
           }
   
           private void OnLoaded(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e)
           {
               this.timer = new DispatcherTimer(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 6), DispatcherPriority.Normal, OnTimerTick, Dispatcher);
               this.timer.Start();
           }
   
           private void OnTimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e)
           {
               var balloon = new FancyBalloon { BalloonText = "Ring Ring" };
               tb.ShowCustomBalloon(balloon, PopupAnimation.Scroll, 3000);
           }

4. Add a user control to define what you want your custom pop-up to look like.
   

   <UserControl x:Class="WpfBasicBalloon.FancyBalloon"
                xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
                xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
                xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" 
                xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" 
                mc:Ignorable="d" 
                Height="300" Width="300">
       <Grid>
           <Border 
               Opacity="0.5"
               Background="Pink" 
               BorderBrush="Red"
               BorderThickness="2"
               CornerRadius="10"
               Margin="10">
               <Border.BitmapEffect>
                   <DropShadowBitmapEffect />
               </Border.BitmapEffect>
               <StackPanel Margin="10">
               <TextBlock Text="Hello World - in pink just for Jo. :-)" />
               <TextBlock Text="{Binding BalloonText}" />
           </StackPanel>
           </Border>
       </Grid>
   </UserControl>

Easy.

Its so little code, given a few days of my cat walking randomly across my keyboard, there's a good chance he will come up with this code on his own. Better chances of winning the lottery over the holiday break any way!

Happy holidays.