toast style popup for my application

I have created an application that runs in the taskbar. When a user clicks the application it pops up etc. What I would like is similar functionality to that in MSN when one of my friends logs in. Apparently this is know as a toast popup? I basically want something to popup from every 20 minutes toast style fom the application in the taskbar.

My existing application is winforms based written in C# with .net 3.5

Cheers

From stackoverflow

• Animate your window position so that it raises up.

• This is pretty simple. You just need to set window in off-screen area and animate it's position until it is fully visible. Here is a sample code:

  public partial class Form1 : Form
  {
      private Timer timer;
      private int startPosX;
      private int startPosY;
  
      public Form1()
      {
          InitializeComponent();
          // We want our window to be the top most
          TopMost = true;
          // Pop doesn't need to be shown in task bar
          ShowInTaskbar = false;
          // Create and run timer for animation
          timer = new Timer();
          timer.Interval = 50;
          timer.Tick += timer_Tick;
      }
  
      protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
      {
          // Move window out of screen
          startPosX = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Width - Width;
          startPosY = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Height;
          SetDesktopLocation(startPosX, startPosY);
          base.OnLoad(e);
          // Begin animation
          timer.Start();
      }
  
      void timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
          //Lift window by 5 pixels
          startPosY -= 5; 
          //If window is fully visible stop the timer
          if (startPosY < Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Height - Height)
              timer.Stop();
          else
             SetDesktopLocation(startPosX, startPosY);
      }
  }
  

• There's support for notification balloons in Win32 (I'm not a .net programmer), with some useful properties as old new thing explains.

  There's also a system wide semaphor which you should lock to prevent more than one popup from any application appearing at once.

  There's a a couple of pages on the toast semaphor on msdn - the toast semaphor and in the broader context of usability. I also came across some example code to use the balloon api from C# while looking, but can't vouch for it.

• You're moving the form out of the screen to the right, and then raising it. It would never actually raise into the desktop view. X-axis is right and left, Y-axis is up and down. Adding to the X-axis makes it go further right, and adding to the Y-axis makes it go further down.