Anyone know of an efficient way of detecting movement of any windows currently open on a windows system? I need to detect a window's movement, determine if it collides with my applications Form, and bump it out from underneath if necessary.
I know I can scan through an enumerated list and check each window -- but that is way to intensive to perform constantly.
Background:
I have a taskbar-esque application that docks on the side of a user's screen. When the "Always on Top" feature is on, maximized windows will take up the remaining available space without covering the toolbar, as expected.
However, if you drag a non-maximized window over the toolbar, the application goes behind the toolbar (also expected), but you can no longer grab onto the title bar to move it back -- the window is stuck unless you disable "Always on Top" and then move it. So, I want to bump the window out from underneath.
Although not a direct answer, one possible solution to this is to create your application as an application desktop toolbar rather than a regular window. From the docs:
An application desktop toolbar(also called an appbar) is a window that is similar to the Microsoft Windows taskbar. It is anchored to an edge of the screen... The system prevents other applications from using the desktop area occupied by an appbar. (emphasis added)
This may not be a great fit for your scenario because it is oriented towards COM and unmanaged code rather than managed apps: however see this CodeProject article for info about using this feature from C#.
Failing that, you could try installing a hook (see SetWindowsHookEx) and listening for move messages but this is pretty low-level...
Try checking your PaintEventArgs ClipRectangle ..
(edit: and/or WindowFromPoint shooting match)
You can get notification of window movements using a CBT Hook: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644977(VS.85).aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/FindWindow.aspx?msg=3262771
"FindWindow By Jörg Bausch"
Will get you the external (not your app's) window ID (IntPtr) the mouse went up over from within your C# application. For the desktop, and everything else on the desktop, it will return the same pointer (you can't distinguish, using this code, between as mouse-up on a folder, the desktop, the Recycle Bin).
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/globalhook.aspx
"Processing Global Mouse and Keyboard Hooks in C# By George Mamaladze"
Will allow you to create GlobalHook for keyboard and mouse-events in C#. I've used it recently in VS 2010 beta 2 : it is NOT USABLE compiled against FrameWork 4.0, but does compile and work okay against FrameWork 3.5 and lower. If you download only George's demo app, be aware the download doesn't include the required dll, and will fail when you launch the .exe file (which I have brought to George's attention).
I've never worked with a "desktop application toolbar;" I hope this is relevant.
best,
Related
I'm working on a small internal use utility ATM, and I'd like it to appear in the system tray rather than the task bar. I'd also like it to be minimised there from startup rather than loading the main form. Also I'd like to know how to customise the left click action and right click menu on the system tray icon.
I'm failing to find a detailed walk through on this, I'm pretty new to C# (and in fact Windows in general!) so not 100% sure what to search for!
Read this article, it's a good tutorial:
https://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/creating-tray-applications-in-.net-a-practical-guide/
The basic answer of using a NotifyIcon is correct but, like many things .NET, there are a host of subtleties involved in doing it right. The tutorial mentioned by Brad gives a good walk-through of the very basics, but does not address any of these:
Does closing the application from the system tray properly close any open child forms?
Does the application enforce that only one instance of itself may run (applicable to most, though not all, tray apps) ?
How to open WPF child windows as well as WinForms child windows, if desired.
How to support dynamic context menus.
The standard NotifyIcon exists in WinForms space; can I do a pure WPF solution? (Yes you can!)
I just had an article published on Simple-Talk.com that addresses these points and more in great detail, providing a tray application framework that you can put to use immediately, plus a complete, real-world example application to show everything in practice. See Creating Tray Applications in .NET: A Practical Guide, published November, 2010.
I'm working on a WPF app where i want to display the built-in windows 7 onscreen keyboard in a 'always there' manner. So i want to:
Move it to a particular location
Set it to a certain width and height
Remove the caption/titlebar so the user can't move it around or close it
Remove that abilty to resize it (or any other user adjustments for that matter).
I've tried all the typical API functions (MoveWindow, SetWindowPos, SetWindowLong, etc...) but it refuses to do anything. Code currently works with all other processes and apps (such as internet explorer and the command prompt); it's almost as if the api calls don't apply to the osk, or that it's 'locked'. What am i missing? Thanks in advance.
I checked with Spy++ and the On-Screen Keyboard uses something called "DirectUIHWND". You may wish to look into DirectUIHWND APIs.
A possibly helpful link:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/cominterfacehookingpart.aspx
In addition, some people have warned that DirectUI is undocumented.
I'm new to windows programming (any win 32 API).
I want to create a windows application that listens to the clipborad all the time and reacts to keyboard shortcuts (for example you copy text from the ClipBoard and press Ctrl-F and something is done on the text in the clipboard).
I know how to make a window app in win32 and in C# (.NET) but it's a windowed application which has a window and appears in the window panel.
I want an pplication that will only be visible in the taskbar right part so you can close it (like most antivirus do) and keeps on running from start will it's closed.
Anyone got some code template, or can reffer me to a tutorial ? i don't mind if it's C\C+ or C#.
10x.
It can be another windows application in which the form's ShowInTaskbar property is set to false and you add a NotifyIcon component to put it into tray. Here is an article from CodeProject. You can find many more on codeproject or on other programming related sites.
You may find this useful, although it's in C.
Or this in C#.
I have an idea to write a multimotor taskbar application in c# for windows xp. So, does anyone have any information how
to put a taskbar on the second
monitor,
to make it use windows styles,
to prevent aplications running on the
second monitor to appear in default
taskbar,
so on...
Any help would be ...helpful )))
You can P/Invoke SHAppBarMessage() to create a task bar. The APPBARDATA.hWnd you'll need could simply be the Handle of a Form class. Anything goes as far as what you display.
Getting the notifications you'll need to make the task bar display active windows is going to be a whole lot more difficult. You'll need to use the global WH_SHELL hook, set by SetWindowsHookEx() to receive the notifications you'll need. You cannot set this hook in C#, it requires an unmanaged DLL that you can inject into a process. You'll find crucial help in this project.
Getting the Windows taskbar to not do its normal job is going to be impossible unless you somehow find the undocumented information you'll need. Microsoft doesn't document this for a good reason, the taskbar is an important part of the way they innovate on the Windows look-and-feel. Quite visible in Win7. They don't want any code to take a dependency on this, they'd have a near-impossible job of keeping the next version of Windows compatible. I'd have to recommend you completely disable the Windows taskbar and replace it by your own.
I have to stop applications when the window is closed. The window stays in the memory when click the (x) button. How can i remove the app in memory? Also another question is that i want the application to be installed when hard restart the pocket pc, how can i do it?
Thanks
By default the form will just hide when you click the X in the top right. You need to set the "MinimizeBox" property of the form to "False" for the application to close instead.
Installing the application on hard restart (often referred to as cold boot) requires that you put a CAB file for the application on the flash (persistent) memory of the device. You will then normally have to write a script and place that somewhere to call the CAB. This can vary from device to device so you'll have to look that one up.
Setting the form's MinimizeBox property to False causes the OK button to appear.
The Ok button is for closing the application instead of minimalizing
To prevent to application from minimizing which is the default behavior for PocketPC applications, set the MinimizeBox option to false on the form.
As for your second option that might be trickier because it depends on the PDA. If it has persistent memory you could put it there, and find a way to run the CAB file during initialization.
[Update]
It would appear that there is a Startup Folder in the windows menu. Perhaps you could write a utility that checks if your application is installed and if not launches the CAB installer.
The default behavior is indeed minimizing the application. Using a custom task manager which replaces the [x] you can tune this behavior. Some vendors (for instance HTC) include a custom taskmanager exactly for this purpose.
A generic but good task manager is WkTASK, here is the relevant feature description:
X button
Using the X button, you can
use some actions as follows:
Tap: really close
Tap&Hold: show context menu
Drag: some gestures (To show a program launcher, drag toward down. To
show Today, drag toward left.)
WkTASK offers a lot more, but you can fine tune it to do only what you want.