I'm using AnimateWindow from C++ to show a toast notification in the bottom right of my monitor. This all works fine in terms of animation so there's not a functionality issue.
My Toasts are Forms styled to look "nice" using Form.Load, Form.Close to set the window position and show it via the animation.
My issue is as the form is animating I lose hyperlinks and images. These appear again when the form is stationary.
Has anyone come across a similar issue as this? At first, I assumed it was a parenting issue which I attempted to solve by setting the parent of the Hyperlink and Icons to this which didn't solve the issue and I'm stumped from here on.
This was an issue with parenting as suspected. I solved this by setting the parent of the icon on top of the control below to the below control.
foregroundImage.parent = backgroundImage;
Related
I have a splittercontainer (vertical) placed on form. In the right panel, I placed another splittercontainer (horizontal).
When I run the application, the topmost splittercontainer works fine, no issues. The problem is with the embedded splittercontainer.
The size of the embedded splittercontainer when resized is fine, however the panels show up as a smaller size. I did not even thing that was possible. I cannot seem to get the embedded panel to consistently show the proper dimensions.
I did a search, and turned up this article.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953934
I tried out the recommended solution, and quite usual for any Microsoft post, it does not work.
In fact, things worked better without the suggested solution. At least after the application showed, I was able to get the panels to size properly, just by adjusting the splitter container of either control.
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance,
Sarah
After suffering for quite some time, it seems that posting my question got my head to think of a solution.
The outer splittercontainer must be set for docking type fill. Embed the second splitter container directly inside Panel 2 and have that set to docking type fill.
In the resize event, do not add any Controls.Add() for the splitter container, as that is done in the designer. You should add a Controls.Add() for any forms that you want to show.
Do not size the splittercontainers. Allow Windows to do that. Do resize the forms. Make sure to set the TopLevel to false first and show the form after adding to the control of the panel.
I tried the docking type none and several other things. It was either setting to none or setting the manually setting the sizing or whatever that caused the problem.
I hope this post helps someone.
I'm pretty much out of ideas here... for everything else, setting the background color to Color.Transparent or setting the TransparencyKey works fine...
I have an mp4 Video which I need to play as a "background" of my form. To do this, I'm currently using the WMP control. My problem: I can't add any controls on top of it, since they always render a background. Which looks ** on the video...
Any suggestions?
A hack I've used successfully in a similar situation:
Create a separate, borderless, transparent form (transparency works best at the Form level)
Host button controls on that form
Launch the control form when your video form launches
Wire event handling such that the floating form always moves, resizes etc. whenever the main form changes
Calculate position of the floating for based on parent form's specs
Always push the floating form to the top, above the parent form
Told you it was a hack. But if you get all the events and calculations wired up it should work fine.
P.S. I also recall having to do a poll timer with a function that made sure every 250 millis or so that the Z-order of the two forms was what you wanted. (Switching apps and windows changed the z-order unexpectedly and w/o events, thus the polling solution.)
P.S. II It is very easy to prototype the feasibility of this solution. Just create a separate app with the above-mentioned specs and move it over your video. (You will need to retain the Form border to be able to move/resize the window easily.)
Try rendering your labels using GDI+:
You can see sample here: (the Using GDI+ for drawing images with transparency part):
http://www.broculos.net/en/article/how-use-transparent-images-and-labels-windows-forms
Now Im customizing title bar of my application. My aim is to add one extra button on title bar. Im my previous question people have adviced me the way I can customize non client area. Thats works perfectly except one small thing - glowing! I can draw glowing in nonclient area but I cannot make it spreads out of the window. I also cant find any resource about this subj.
I looked into this sample and made my own test app for investigating non client drawing facilities. Screen shot of my app's window:
So you can see that system button glows out of the windows when my is clipped by borderframe.
For example, Skype's window have four custom buttons in title bar and they can "glow" out of the window frame:
Can anybody advise me to find out the way to draw button's glowing out of the window?
Thanks in advance!
[EDIT]
Thank you everybody for answers!
Skype cheats it, and has a little sliver along the top of their window; where they can draw it.
You can see it with Process Explorer to SpyXX:
See also
MSDN: Custom Window Frame Using DWM
I don't think it's possible to draw beyond your NC area, and I kind of doubt they are drawing the whole UI to exactly match DWM Aero effects.
Given how this looks, I wonder if they did some tricks with either the help or restore button of a CustomBorderForm, which would then get the DWM blur highlight effect "for free".
Here's the most relevant article I could find to this: http://geekswithblogs.net/kobush/articles/CustomBorderForms3.aspx
Followup - I think this custom chrome thread has more pointers to the same techniques (although different goal): Custom titlebars/chrome in a WinForms app
AFAIK, this is not possible, because the area outside your window's border simply does not belong to you.
The Skype screenshot is from a custom-drawn frame that most likely extends a bit beyond the visible borders, not from an Aero Glass frame. You can tell the difference if you look carefully.
OK, anyone can explain how Jing take screen shots with that overlay form? It appears that it take a full screen shot and records all visible window handles and let you select within the form a specific hwnd. could be true? if is, what are the big steps to achieve this? could be a simple picturebox or without a custom control i don't have a chance to freeze the screen while taking a screen shot?
Thank you!
I'm not familiar enough with Jing to know exactly what it uses. But there are two basic techniques. One is as you mention, capture the screen and display it in a topmost borderless form. The Vista/Win7 Snipping tool works that way. You'll find the code you need to get this started it in my answer in this thread.
The other, perhaps more likely to be used by Jing, is similar to what Spy++ does, allowing the user to move the mouse and draw a selection rectangle around the window. Its advantage is that it can deal with windows resizing or disappearing while you've got the tool running. You implement it by using a topmost form the size of the screen that has its TransparencyKey property set to the value of the BackColor. Fuchsia is a popular choice. You can draw on this form with the OnPaint() method, the drawing appears on top of all the windows. You'd need some P/Invoke (GetWindow) to iterate the underlying windows in their Z-order to know which window the user is pointing at. GetWindowRect() to get the window rectangle. Plus some hassle to deal with Aero lying about the border size.
You can find sample code to get you started on that technique in my answer in this thread.
I would like to remove the resizing border from my WPF custom window.
I already found that I have to handle the WM_NCCALCSIZE message and return 0.
That removes the border and aligns the window to the top left corner of the window.
The problem is that by doing so, the client area increases and the WPF root control doesn't.
That creates black edges on the left and bottom sides of the window that I would like to get rid of.
I'm using VS2010 C# Windows XP and would like this to work under both Windows XP and Windows 7.
Thanks in Advance.
EDIT:
I found out what is causing the black edges, they are the window behind.
Now it seems that the problem is with the root element of the window not occupying the whole window. When I set its margin to negative values it draws over the black area. Apparently the layout pass is ok and the desired size is the same as the window but the render size is different.
I also found out that the whole problem could be solved by removing WS_THICKFRAME from the window style. The problem with that is the resizing functionality that is enabled only when WS_THICKFRAME is used. I'm using WM_NCHITTEST to do the resizing and if the window knows it doesn't have a resizing border, it will shutdown its resizing functionality.
I would like to make the root element occupy the whole window to eliminate the black window background or alternatively enable the native resizing functionality without the thick frame.
Thanks.
I found the reason for that black area.
It appears that the code I was using that someone else made was causing the black area by somehow messing with the layout pass of the framework and therefore the correct size of the root element.
I handled the WM_NCCALCSIZE in another project and it worked like a charm.
After all of that, although I found the idle way to create a custom window with all of the original window functionality, I decided to use the standard window the Microsoft has to offer so that my program will have future compatibility with windows.
If someone would like the code or help with WPF window customization they can comment here and I will help so that at least all of my research won't go in vain.
Thanks for reading.