Hello Garth,
Yes, this behavior you're seeing is the result of a change that took effect in version 8.5. The change came about as a result of numerous complaints with the previous minimizing behavior in CVI. You can read the gory details in this
thread.
This topic is a bit complicated, but I'll try to explain it as succintly as possible.
What happens is that by default the application as a whole is associated with a taskbar button. Each individual panel (or window) can also be associated with its own taskbar button, although by default these are hidden. If they're not hidden, you can use each window's button to minimize/restore the window.
Let's assume for the moment that your panels don't have associated buttons. When you minimize a window, only that window is minimized. If there's only one window in your application, CVI automatically minimizes the application whenever you minimize the window, such that you can then click on the application's taskbar button to restore the application (and the window). But if you have two windows, when you minimize the first window, the application is still not minimized -- only the window. If you click on the application's taskbar button then, you're really minimizing the application (thus hiding the other window). When you click on it again, you are restoring the application, which means that it returns to the state it was in before it was minimized (one window visible, and the other hidden).
Before CVI 8.5, when you minimized a window, it would create a silly little button on the desktop, which could then be clicked on to restore the window. This was roundly panned by CVI users (rightly so) as being very unorthodox behavior. Now, by default that button is no longer used, which means that (by default) a panel does not have a dedicated button that you can click on to to restore it.
Fortunately, you have three possibilities that you can pick from to get around this predicament:
1. Restore the pre-8.5 behavior by calling:
SetSystemAttribute (ATTR_MINIMIZE_PANELS_TO_DESKTOP, 1);
2. Allow each of your windows to have its own taskbar button by calling:
SetPanelAttribute (panel, ATTR_HAS_TASKBAR_BUTTON, 1);
You don't have to enable buttons on all your windows, if you don't want to. Just the ones that you want to control individually from the taskbar.
3. If you would like one of your windows (the main window?) to be the master window of your application, as far as the minimize/restore behavior is concerned, you can configure it so that when you minimize that window, it minimizes all the others too (and the application). And when you restore the application, it also restores all windows. You can do that by calling:
SetPanelAttribute (panel, ATTR_MINIMIZE_OTHER_PANELS, 1);
Hope this helps.
Luis
