Moving application windows to the top or bottom of the desktop windows clutter with BOTTOM and TOPMOST, or centering applications to the middle of the users screen with CENTER, might be useful but what about hiding or restoring a running application on demand? WINSTATE does just that from a Flash projector. WINSTATE let's you control a window state as you would when you use the window title bar left dropdown menu to minimize, maximize or restore a window application.

usage: winstate.exe state pattern

If you call WINSTATE without specifying values for the state and pattern arguments, nothing will happen. If you supply a value for the pattern, any window that contains the pattern in its caption will have it's window state changed to the value specified by the state argument. Valid values for state are min, max and show. Case is not important but spaces are significant.

This actionScript command fscommand("EXEC", "winstate.exe" + chr(9) + "min" + chr(9) + "Flash"); will minimize any windows that contain "Flash" in the caption.

This actionScript command fscommand("EXEC", "winstate.exe" + chr(9) + "max" + chr(9) + "Flash"); will maximize any windows that contain "Flash" in the caption.

This actionScript command fscommand("EXEC", "winstate.exe" + chr(9) + "show" + chr(9) + "Flash"); will undo the effects of a minimize or maximize operation and restore any windows that contain "Flash" to their last normal window size and position.

• If you use the old Flash trick of using tabs in place of spaces, WINSTATE will look for tabs in the caption (exact match) and will probably fail to find the application.
  
  
• Flash 5 will allow you use a tab between the application name and the pattern.
  
  
• Flash MX does not allow spaces in the argument to the EXEC actionScript command. This means that the WINSTATE utility can't be called directly from Flash MX.
  
  
• In a batch file the pattern can contain spaces which provides a workaround for Flash 5 limitations and makes it possible to use WINSTATE from Flash MX projectors.
  
  
• If you're working with SWF Studio you can use spaces in the pattern argument.