I have an game application I have written for Windows Mobile and I want to have a timer associated with the puzzle. If the program loses focus for any reason (call comes in, user switches programs, user hits the Windows button) then I want a pop up dialog box to cover the puzzle and the timer to stop. When the user closes the pop up dialog the timer can start up again.
Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks
Take a look at the article over at OpenNETCF's Community site on determining when a Form or Process changes.
A quick way would be to use PInvoke to call GetForegroundWindow() and GetWindowText() whenever your timer ticks (once a second?).
GetForegroundWindow() returns a windows handle which you can use to call GetWindowText(). If the text of the foreground window matches your form's Text property (its caption), you know your app has the focus. You can then show or hide your puzzle in each timer tick.
Related
I developed a desktop program (C#) with the purpose to notice me every 30 minutes a message (a message box appear on topMost and the program icon on taskbar blinks), then the OK_klick event remove the property topMost and the counter restart from zero.
But sometimes:
my form doesn't appear topMost, but other applications (generally Web pages) cover it (I bypassed this with flashing the icon on task bar)
my application semms hasn't pryority on other process (for example a web page is loading) with the result the form appear at later time.
Is it possible to give to my app an higer priority in order to, whatever the system is doing, the form appear in time?
My app runs on Vista, DotNet4.0, language C#
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.
In my project I have a MessageBox that pops up from time to time.
When I'm playing a game and the MessageBox appears, the game is minimized and I'm back to the desktop.
This might depend from app to app, but this specific app/game minimizes when MessageBox appears.
How to avoid this behavior? Is there anything I can do to the MessageBox to make it lose focus/not activated ? I tried to look at the MessageBox methods but no luck.
It sounds like you want the message box to be able to display while the rest of your code is still running. Type of messagebox you are using is modal and needs to be closed until it allows you to interact with the other open window.
I suggest you start a new thread for the message box so that the thread can continue to run allowing you to be able to interact with the other windows.
I want to write a convenient front-end to the old and ugly Win95 application. I nailed the problem to this:
Invoke the target executable;
Wait for application window to appear;
Wait for message box (i hope it is a message box) to appear;
Trigger an onClick event for the "OK" button of the message box;
Wait for the application to exit.
1st and 5th items are easy, it is just the System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo stuff; but i have no idea where to start with the rest of items. How could it be done?
Take a look at the windows automation framework, this is a good starter codeproject.com/Articles/141842/
Sorry for the delay.
If it's not too much of an effort you could open up the executable in a disassembler (like ollydbg) and simply NOP the call to the messagebox. Then from C# you could simply wait for the process to exit instead of dismissing the messagebox using code.
this is my first post. I have a huge problem which make me headaches. I have an app uses WinForms, a TTS (Text-To-Speech) voice and custom-buttons with states.
In my 1st form -main- when I click a button, the app opens a 2nd form above the 1st. Ok.
When I close the 2nd form trough a button, I tell the TTS say something and the form closed itself, viewing again the 1st form. Ok.
The problem starts when I click two times in the button on the 2nd form: the TTS says something, the button closes and the 'second click' is still in the click buffer (or somewhere) and it makes click in the 1st form (which appears 4 seconds later when I hit the button for the first time).
I am using the voice in a Sync mode; if I use the voice in an Async mode, the application ends wit h a nice exception.
If I click three or four times in the 2nd form, the other clicks still remains in buffer and clicks in the 1st form all the times.
I tried to (1) delete the DoubleClick event, (2) delete the event associated to the button and (3) hide the button which is clicked automatically when I return from the 2nd form, (4) hide the 1st form before create the 2nd and restore when it finishes.
Suggestions?
Thanks!
PD: I'm sorry by my English :S
PD2: I've uploaded a very simple example of what happens.
EDIT 2
Having looked at the code I understand the issue you're having now. The reason button clicks are being stacked up is when you call Speak within TTS the application locks up while it waits for the function to finish. Any presses in that time are stacked up until the application is free again to process them, you then close the form instanly before the messages are handled and these are then dealt with in the first form.
I've come up with a few solutions which could work for you:
Use only the SpeakAsync command within your TTS class and introduce a Waiting system where you wait for the speech to finish before doing anything. This will free the application and won't cause the mouse click events to stack up.
After you trigger a Speak command you could access the Windows message list and clear all the mouse click events that occurred before the process finished. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how you'd implement this as I've not done this before. I think you need to overwrite the WndProc function but again I'm not sure. This might be also be a bit dangerous as you may end up clearing a perfectly valid or important system message by mistake. Sorry can't provide any more help on that one.
Implement a background worker in your second form which will process the Speak commands seperately on a background thread. This again will free the application so the mouse click events won't stack up. I've modified your sample project and zipped it up for you to take a look. If you want I can explain further but essentially it does the following:
Form 2 loads and creates a background worker.
Worker_DoWork and Worker_WorkComplete delegates are created and set in the background worker. These functions are called when the worker is started and after the worker has finished.
Form 2 triggers the background worker to start. The background worker then sits in an infinite loop waiting for commands to process.
When the "Hello" button is pressed this sets a SayHello boolean to true, the worker spots this, carrys out the appropriate speak function and then resets the boolean ready for the next press.
When the "Close" button is pressed a CancelASync request is called in the background worker.
CancelASync interupts the BackgroundWorker's main loop (CancellationPending becomes true). The appropriate speak command is sent and the cancel property of the DoWorkEventArgs is set to true before breaking out of the BackgroundWorker's main loop.
Breaking out of the main loop causes Worker_WorkComplete to be called where the form is then closed.
I hope you can follow the example (linked below) and I've explained it well enough here. I prefer this solution as its quite extendable, you can add more conditions within the main worker thread for example.
Like I said, if you have any questions please ask and I'll try help as much as possible.
Hope this helps.
Example Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?2mf1yahto50ljs6
Use a boolean flag to track whether the form is in a state that accepts the click.
IE - when you open the 2nd form, 'boolean canPlaySound = true;' When the button click event fires, only play the sound if canPlaySound is true (and set it to false before playing the sound).
The next click will be ignored because canPlaySound = false. You won't play the sound.
we would like to build a screensaver that shows the desktop and the running applications but prevents user input by showing the login screen. The idea was to build a windows app with no window or a transparent window. However, as soon as the screensaver gets activated the desktop and all applications are hidden from the screen.
Is it possible to start the screensaver without hiding the desktop?
Thx,
bja
Is it possible for you to implement this as something other than a screensaver? I'm assuming that the Windows API does have a method that allows you to tell how long the computer has been idle (otherwise, how does the stuff that manages screensavers do it?), so if you use that you could just set up your application such that it's continuously running as a background process, and will pop up a modal dialog box (or your idea of a transparent window) or something that prompts for the user's login info when the computer has been idle for a certain amount of time.
Why can't you just grab an image of the screen when the SS kicks off. Then use that as the backdrop of your SS.
Vista has a bubbles screen saver that just starts putting bubbles on the screen. Not sure how they do it.
You are better off just creating a full-screen application with a transparent window that starts up on a timer like a screensaver. The screensaver functionality while similar to what you are doing, functions much differently.
As an alternative suggestion, you could always use a service (or background app) to gather the information you want these monitoring tools to display, or even just to grab periodic screenshots of the (hidden) desktop, and then have your screensaver query that app to get the data it needs to display.
That way, you get the benefit (the secure desktop, the usual Windows login sequence, etc.) of a screensaver, but still get to display what you need to.