How to Animate (Scroll) Application Title on the TaskBar

If you need to grab a user attention when something important is about to happen in your application, you can flash a window.

If a lengthy process is about to start in you application, you can indicate that the process is still running by, for example, animating the title of your application, i.e. animating the caption of your application's TaskBar button.

Animated / Scrolling / Marquee TaskBar Title!

Here's how to create a scrolling Title for the TaskBar button

1. Drop a TTimer component on the main form of your application.
2. Handle the OnTimer event as:

   const
     {$J+}
     animatedTitle : string = ' Animated Application''s TaskBar Title ';
     {$J-}
   var
     cnt: Integer;
   begin
     Application.Title := animatedTitle;
     for cnt := 1 to (Length(animatedTitle) - 1) do
       animatedTitle[cnt] := Application.Title[cnt + 1];
     animatedTitle[Length(animatedTitle)] := Application.Title[1];
   end;

   The animatedTitle is a typed constant!

3. Enable or disable the animation by setting the Enabled property of the Timer component to true or false.
4. Watch the title of the application scrolling on the TaskBar's button!

Note: Here's how to create a marquee/scrolling label.

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