Emulator

What I do is set the taskbar to auto-hide and have gotten used to it...but yes, do agree with you that Dolphin could use an "always on top" option.

I have win7 and dont have this problem. I think this one is at your end (settings).

did you replicate the steps by changing the resolution to 1920x1080 and increasing the text size? This is a settings issue that could be resolved by creating an Always on top feature in the dolphin emulator.

Windows 7 has a "feature" and I use the term loosely that keeps the Windows 7 taskbar on top so dummies dont lose the taskbar.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7desktop/thread/9a97ba06-63be-4b47-9568-7e02cb627bfe

Yes, the feature stays. I concur with you in that this MS "feature" is the cause of this. Maybe the devs can put said option on Dolphin (Always on top-style)

I can't reproduce the problem... I mean, your SS seems to be in Full Screen, right? It simply doesn't happen to me, I tried what you said... it seems to be something about your settings.

I am not using Dolphin in full screen when opening any file; I am using a window in 720p on a 1366x768 desktop, so unless I remove the taskbar I cant see the whole screen :(

My settings are as follows:

1920x1080 on an LG42" LCD.
Nvidia 8800GTS
Windows 7x64 with display text set to 150% (larger) instead of 100% (smaller) which is the default on Windows 7. I do this because I want to keep a high resolution, but have my computer connected to the TV so I can browse from the couch easily. If I switch back to 100% on the display text the problem does not occur. I know its kinda of a weird thing, but Im sure if there is an always on top option the problem would be resolved. When I launch it from Hyperspin-fe a Frontend I do not have this problem because I have a custom script enabling the desktop to be hidden.

To set the display text in windows 7 right click on your desktop and select screen resolution. Click on where it says "Make text or other items larger or smaller" and set to Largest. Open up dolphin and any game and you will see what i mean. Even when I played with the render to main window and have resolution set to 1920x1080 the windows taskbar sits on top of dolphin as per my screenshot.

You are right felipe, i tested it and the taskbar sit always on top.

Hmm If someone would mention where to place the code I could compile a version myself for testing.

This is something I've noticed myself and think it can be resolved temporarily with two methods. One is a small app called Taskbar Eliminator (Google it, it's freeware) which I used for a long time to remedy this issue.

The second way is go into your Display resolution menu and click on Make text larger or smaller. On the left pane select Set Custom Text Size (DPI) instead of using Windows 7's easier configuration. Turn it up to 150%, and make sure you have "Use XP Style DPI scaling" enabled.

This resolved the issue for me, your mileage may vary. Although yes, I do think this is something that should be fixed within Dolphin itself, this fix worked for me.

I don't understand why this issue was marked as invalid. The full screen function doesn't work properly as I mentioned above. That is the whole point of the issue. Did you duplicate the steps like I mentioned above?

Can someone please take a look at this issue?

While what I said above wasn't really related to this issue, the actual cause is a bug in Windows 7.
That means: Not our fault and we can't/won't do anything about it.

Why can't you allow Dolphin to be run with compatibility settings. See my screen shot. By enabling the "disable display scaling on high dpi settings" on compatibilty settings that would probably resolve the issue.

I don't see how we forbid that right now.

It is not about Forbidding, the compatibility settings is not usable. I will post two screens one of Mess and its compatibility settings and dolphin. You see how its not available?

That's not Dolphin's fault, then.

I'm not trying to argue here, but it is a Dolphin issue and not a windows 7 issue. Windows 7 allows other program to use those settings. It has something to do with a dolphin setting or a compilation setting. Every other program allows it. I do appreciate all that the developers do, I was just trying bring this issue to light.

It is not about Forbidding, the compatibility settings is not usable. I will post two screens one of Mess and its compatibility settings and dolphin. You see how its not available?

Again, this is not Dolphin's fault. If Windows 7 doesn't allow compatibility settings for Dolphin to be adjusted, we can't do anything about that.
It's probably because Dolphin makes use of some Vista-only features, there's no magic code in Dolphin which disables any compatibility features anyway..
That's all I can say.

I am disappointed this issue was marked invalid and has been ignored. I have several different emulators and all of them load full screen on my machine, completely....with no taskbar overlay issues, no inactive window issues. Only this Dolphin emulator seems incapable of loading a rom in true full screen mode. If it is truly a bug in Windows, it seems strange that the only program that manifests this bug is Dolphin.

It does seem like an "Always on Top" option would be the only thing needed to fix this problem that seems unique to Dolphin

Doesn't occur when rendering to the main window, the separate window code is probably not locking the screen borders properly.

felipe, 64bit applications cannot have compatibility settings applied.

"Why can't you allow Dolphin to be run with compatibility settings. See my screen shot. By enabling the "disable display scaling on high dpi settings" on compatibilty settings that would probably resolve the issue."

it won't, Dolphin is DPI Aware.

That makes sense. I know there is a simple program that hides the windows 7 taskbar. Maybe we can write an ahk script to launch the program when dolphin launches and close it when dolphin closes. I will work on it sometime this weekend.