Tabbed Programs
 

Alright. Crazy/lazy idea time.

I need to know, would it be possible to program an application that is basically a shell for several programs.

For example, web browsers like IE, FF and Opera all support tabbing for websites. Would it be possible to host several programs (without having access to their source) in a single "shell" without them showing up on the start bar.

I would use this for making games, recording music, designing pictures. I'd have one program open containing RPGMaker, Idraw, Photoshop, Irfanview and Paint and another containing my browser.

That'd be cool. Sound possible?

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, yes, but I imagine it would be more a case of clever trickery than a true 'program browser' - you'd have the browser bar at the top of the screen say, with all the icons on it for the programs you want. When you start the browser, it opens all the programs and minimises them, but doesn't show them on the taskbar, rather you'd access them by clicking their icon, giving the impression that the browser bar is opening them as a group. 'Twould be a fantastic system hog.

You might be able to open the program in it's own frame, thus allowing you to have a fullscreen window made up of layered frames which are accessed by clicking their tab, but I don't know enough about how those things work to be able to say for sure.

I don't want all of them open at once, lol.

I did find a program, WinTabber. But, for some reason it doesn't work on my computer.