Create AIR app without a taskbar icon

I needed to create a chromeless AIR app that would act like the the old Active Desktop in Windows -- and did not show a taskbar icon that a user could close. Here is how it was done:


Create a new AIR app (for which a taskbar icon is required). This app spawns a new application component based on mx:Window with the HTMLLoader in it. I used a separate component for this so it could function independently from the main app. Child apps in AIR do *not* require an icon so you can set the type=NativeWindowType.LIGHTWEIGHT on this new component when you open it. As soon as this new window opens it dispatches a complete event. The main window listens for the complete event and then closes itself -- taking the taskbar icon with it. Since (I believe) in Windows 7 the shortcut "Windows/M" works from the items in the task bar, the fact that the child app is not in the task bar prevents it from being minimized by the shortcut.

By the way, this seems to work only on Windows -- not Mac -- so a different solution would be required for that.