I currently have a small game which runs in a win32 window. I just noticed that when I hold the top of the window (the bar which has the closing button) it freezes my application. I would like to disable this as it manages to completely destroy my application (timers continue to count).
It seems that with even the most minimalistic settings for creation of the window it still has this feature. How can I disable this? I currently have:
HWND hWnd = CreateWindowW( L"Game",L"Game",
0x00000000L | 0x00080000L,
wr.left,
wr.top,
wr.right-wr.left,
wr.bottom-wr.top,
NULL,
NULL,
wc.hInstance,
NULL );
I read that my thread is ignored while dragging, if I am forced into using 2 threads could someone please provide a small example of usage?
Or should I stop the timers? (what message should I catch, and would it even be catched?)
Update
I am using instances of my time class to handle timings which looks something like:
Timer::Timer() {
__int64 frequency;
QueryPerformanceFrequency( (LARGE_INTEGER*)&frequency );
invFreqMilli = 1.0f / (float)((double)frequency / 1000.0);
StartWatch();
}
void Timer::StartWatch() {
startCount = 0;
currentCount = 0;
watchStopped = false;
QueryPerformanceCounter( (LARGE_INTEGER*)&startCount );
}
My Win32 message loop contains: mousemove, keyup and keydown.
When DefWindowProc handles WM_SYSCOMMAND with either SC_MOVE or SC_SIZE in the wParam, it enters a loop until the user stops it by releasing the mouse button, or pressing either enter or escape. It does this because it allows the program to render both the client area (where your widgets or game or whatever is drawn) and the borders and caption area by handling WM_PAINT and WM_NCPAINT messages (you should still receive these events in your Window Procedure).
It works fine for normal Windows apps, which do most of their processing inside of their Window Procedure as a result of receiving messages. It only effects programs which do processing outside of the Window Procedure, such as games (which are usually fullscreen and not affected anyway).
However, there is a way around it: handle WM_SYSCOMMAND yourself, resize or move yourself. This requires a good deal of effort, but may prove to be worth it. Alternatively, you could use setjmp/longjmp to escape from the Window Procedure when WM_SIZING is sent, or Windows Fibers along the same lines; these are hackish solutions though.
I solved it (using the first method) this past weekend, if you're interested I have released the code to the public domain on sourceforge. Just make sure to read the README, especially the caveat section. Here it is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32loopl/
Since the title bar to the user that he/she can move the window, you could remove that title bar and borders altogether. See "opening a window that has no title bar with win32" for an example.
When the game launches or is paused, you could show your own UI elements to allow the user to move the game window in these specific situations but only then.
You can check for the size/move loop using the WM_ENTERSIZEMOVE and WM_EXITSIZEMOVE messages.
Related
I've been trying multiple ways of bringing a window into focus and on top of other windows.
I've tried SetForegroundWindow(), BringWindowToTop(), SetActiveWindow(). None of these work consistently.
How can I simply make it so that a window that I want to be in focus, becomes on top of all other windows and is focused? Why is this so difficult?
SetForegroundWindow() is the correct way to change the foreground window, but the thread that calls SetForegroundWindow() has to meet certain criteria for it to "work". If it does not meet the criteria, the window's taskbar button is flashed instead. This is by design. This is to protect the user from applications stealing focus and you should respect that.
See also:
Foreground activation permission is like love: You can’t steal it, it has to be given to you
What if two programs did this?
Your process needs to satisfy a few conditions for it to be able to set the foreground window.
This is to prevent applications from stealing focus - which is a very bad user experience.
Imagine you're writing an email, and halfway through it your application decides now would be a good time to push a window into foreground. As you're typing suddenly the focused window would instantly change and your keypresses would now be sent to your program instead of the mail program. Not only could this cause all sorts of havoc (the keys you pressed are now sent to your program, so hotkeys might get triggered, dialogs dismissed, etc...) - but it would also be a really frustrating experience for the user (especially for less technically-inclined people).
That is the reason why SetForegroundWindow() & similar functions sometimes won't push your window to the foreground, but still report success. Your window will still flash in the task bar though, so users know that something happened in your application.
SetForegroundWindow
The exact list of conditions that need to be met for SetForegroundWindow() to work are detailed in the documentation:
The system restricts which processes can set the foreground window.
A process can set the foreground window only if one of the following conditions is true:
The process is the foreground process.
The process was started by the foreground process.
The process received the last input event.
There is no foreground process.
The foreground process is being debugged.
The foreground is not locked (see LockSetForegroundWindow).
The foreground lock time-out has expired (see SPI_GETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT in SystemParametersInfo).
No menus are active.
An application cannot force a window to the foreground while the user is working with another window ¹. Instead, Windows flashes the taskbar button of the window to notify the user.
1 this is what prevents the mail program example detailed above from happening.
A process that fulfills these criteria can also "share" its permission to set the foreground window with another process by calling AllowSetForegroundWindow()
SetActiveWindow
SetActiveWindow() only works if the targeted window is attached to your message queue and one of your application windows is currently the foreground window.
Activates a window. The window must be attached to the calling thread's message queue.
The window will be brought into the foreground (top of Z-Order) if its application is in the foreground when the system activates the window.
BringWindowToTop
BringWindowToTop() is a convenience function for SetWindowPos(), which again has the same restrictions:
If an application is not in the foreground, and should be in the foreground, it must call the SetForegroundWindow function.
To use SetWindowPos to bring a window to the top, the process that owns the window must have SetForegroundWindow permission.
Using UI Automation
Since you mentioned that you need this functionality for an accessibility tool, here's how you could accomplish this using UI Automation:
This example uses bare-bones COM for simplicity, but if you want you can of course use e.g. wil for a more C++-like API.
#include <uiautomation.h>
bool MoveWindowToForeground(IUIAutomation* pAutomation, HWND hWnd) {
// retrieve an ui automation handle for a given window
IUIAutomationElement* element = nullptr;
HRESULT result = pAutomation->ElementFromHandle(hWnd, &element);
if (FAILED(result))
return false;
// move the window into the foreground
result = element->SetFocus();
// cleanup
element->Release();
return SUCCEEDED(result);
}
int main()
{
// initialize COM, only needs to be done once per thread
CoInitialize(nullptr);
// create the UI automation object
IUIAutomation* pAutomation = nullptr;
HRESULT result = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CUIAutomation, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IUIAutomation, reinterpret_cast<LPVOID*>(&pAutomation));
if (FAILED(result))
return 1;
// move the given window into the foreground
HWND hWnd = FindWindowW(nullptr, L"Calculator");
MoveWindowToForeground(pAutomation, hWnd);
// cleanup
pAutomation->Release();
CoUninitialize();
return 0;
}
I make small game and have some problem with low priority window messages, that incessantly sending from system and block running game logic's code.
I create my message loop something like this:
bool Window::SystemRoutineAndCheckQuit() {
::MSG msg;
while( ::PeekMessage( &msg, nullptr, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE ) ) {
if( msg.message == WM_QUIT ) {
::UnregisterClass( registeredClassName, ::GetModuleHandle( nullptr ) );
DLOG( lg ) << "Exit from system loop" << DLOG_END;
return false;
}
::TranslateMessage( &msg );
::DispatchMessage( &msg );
}
return true;
}
//....
while( window.SystemRoutineAndCheckQuit() ) {
// do all render and logic
}
I.e. before every frame I wanna process all messages from windows and then, when queue will empty do all logic. I notice when window resizing I get same message WM_SIZING again and again and queue never will empty when mouse button still press (even when size of window don't change from previos call I receive message with same window coordinates). So it block execute my code.
Is there any other messages, that keep windows message queue don't empty and what is the best way to process all messages without some low priority, like WM_SIZING?
I test it on Windows 8.
PS: I need resize window, so I don't wanna disallow it by change style.
EDIT: sorry for incorrect description problem, but found what real happened (and why my previously attempt to fix it by limit number of processed messages, or by break message process when get same message two times in sequence will not success). From PeekMessage I get message WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN and after this message program don't return from ::DispatchMessage and block continue execution of thread until mouse will be released. And when program in DispatchMessage, my handler get repeatly WM_SIZING or WM_MOVING (independently what return from message handler function (result of DefWindowProc, TRUE (message was processed) or 0).
You could just process N messages before each frame.. where N is a limit you set between 1-10. That way you can process a reasonable number of events, then get onto your actual game logic.
It's conceivable that Windows may just generate the 'window sizing' message continually when the queue is empty, to make sure applications are aware the window is being resized.
(Maybe MS think applications might not know, maybe there's nothing else the user can do.. so MS want to hammer that single message.)
When DefWindowProc handles WM_SYSCOMMAND with either SC_MOVE or SC_SIZE in the wParam, it enters a loop until the user stops it by releasing the mouse button, or pressing either enter or escape. It does this because it allows the program to render both the client area (where your widgets or game or whatever is drawn) and the borders and caption area by handling WM_PAINT and WM_NCPAINT messages (you should still receive these events in your Window Procedure).
It works fine for normal Windows apps, which do most of their processing inside of their Window Procedure as a result of receiving messages. It only effects programs which do processing outside of the Window Procedure, such as games (which are usually fullscreen and not affected anyway).
However, there is a way around it: handle WM_SYSCOMMAND yourself, resize or move yourself. This requires a good deal of effort, but may prove to be worth it. Alternatively, you could use setjmp/longjmp to escape from the Window Procedure when WM_SIZING is sent, or Windows Fibers along the same lines; these are hackish solutions though.
I solved it (using the first method) this past weekend, if you're interested I have released the code to the public domain on sourceforge. Just make sure to read the README, especially the caveat section. Here it is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32loopl/
I originally had an ActiveX control that registered a Windows timer (with SetTimer()) that fires every few seconds. That worked fine so far. Now in order to implement a full screen mode, I added a child window to my control that is supposed to show the content while the control itself manages all the ActiveX stuff.
The problem that I have with this approach is that my WM_TIMER suddenly stops firing at some time. I have traced it back to UIDeactivate() being called on my control but I don't know why this method is called (I believe it has something to do with losing focus) when it wasn't called before.
I would also like to know why my WM_TIMER events suddenly stop while everything else still seems to work fine. And what could it have to do with showing the content in a child window instead of on the ActiveX control itself?
Timers stops for a reason. Which might be:
You do stop timer by KillTimer call
Your window is re-created and timer is not re-enabled
Your control is windowless and you actually don't have a HWND handle
There is a collision in timer identifiers, there is something else (e.g. internal subclassed window) out there to use the same identifier, it sets, kill the timer and you no longer see WM_TIMER messages you enabled earlier
The window thread is busy (frozen) with some activity which does not include message dispatching, so timer itself exists, is healthy and alive, just no messages sent
The things to do - without yet additional information on the issue on hands:
Check threads of your window, and your Set/KillTimer calls to make sure they all make sense together
Use Spy++ tool to check messages posted for your window and/or in the thread of the interest, to find out if you really have WM_TIMERs missing, or they just don't reach your code; also you might see other interesting messages around
Here's an excerpt from ATL implementation of CComControlBase (I would guess that your control inherits from that). Check the part marked with <<<<<<<<<<<:
inline HRESULT CComControlBase::IOleInPlaceObject_InPlaceDeactivate(void)
{
if (!m_bInPlaceActive)
return S_OK;
if(m_bUIActive) {
CComPtr<IOleInPlaceObject> pIPO;
ControlQueryInterface(__uuidof(IOleInPlaceObject), (void**)&pIPO);
ATLENSURE(pIPO != NULL);
pIPO->UIDeactivate();
}
m_bInPlaceActive = FALSE;
// if we have a window, tell it to go away.
//
if (m_hWndCD)
{
ATLTRACE(atlTraceControls,2,_T("Destroying Window\n"));
if (::IsWindow(m_hWndCD))
DestroyWindow(m_hWndCD); <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
m_hWndCD = NULL;
}
if (m_spInPlaceSite)
m_spInPlaceSite->OnInPlaceDeactivate();
return S_OK;
}
On deactivation, the control window gets destroyed. Therefore it can't process WM_TIMER anymore.
I'm working on an application to detect a pop-up dialog and then
automatically dismiss it. I'm writing this as a C++/Win32 app. The
dialog box is generated by IE 7 and I can detect the window, but
several methods to get the OK button to "click" have failed.
Doing searches for other people's solutions, sending these messages to
the button handle seems to have worked in a lot of situations:
PostMessage( handle, WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, 0 );
PostMessage( handle, WM_LBUTTONUP, 0, 0 );
PostMessage( handle, BM_SETSTATE, 1, 0 );
It has no effect on the button state in my tests though.
I can send tab characters to the main window and see that the OK
button gets focus, but then sending return characters does nothing.
To learn more about this I used Spy++ to get information about the
window hierarchy and what messages are delievered when I manually
click the OK button.
Looking at the message log and reading about WM_MOUSEACTIVATE seamed
to offer a solution. The log info shows that 0002166C was the button
window. So in my code I tried this:
GetClassNameA( handle, str, str_size );
if( strcmp( str, "Internet Explorer_Server" ) != 0 )
return TRUE; // Not the window we're interested in.
// Send a message to activate the button window and have it process a mouse click.
PostMessage( handle, WM_MOUSEACTIVATE, (WPARAM) dialog_handle, MAKELPARAM( HTCLIENT, WM_LBUTTONDOWN );
Based on the window hierarchy and message log, I think the window with
the class name "Internet Explorer_Server" is the button. Maybe I'm
wrong, because it does seem like an odd class name for a button...
Below is a link to the window hierarchy image, message log when I
manually click the OK button. Last is the code that's executed on a 1
second timer ticket, looking for the window.
Any insight and help is appreciated!
Image of the window hierarchy, source, window messages, and test dialog source are available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/matthewmillersmiscellanea/Home/
Ideally, you should create a DLL which exports a Global CBT Window Hook. This would allow you to get early notification when a dialog is going to be created. This would avoid the need to drain resources by constantly polling.
Once you've detected that a dialog is about to be created, you have two options:
1) Prevent the dialog creation.
I don't recommend this, it causes all sorts of problems with code that was fully expecting a valid HWND to be returned by CreateDialog();
2) Asynchronously control the dialog.
We achieved this by using PostMessage with a Registered user message and picking it up by hooking the WNDPROC. When you get this message, then you have to decide how to kill the dialog that you're in.
There are multiple ways to exit the dialog:
a) Simulate pressing OK, Cancel, Abort, No buttons using WM_COMMAND(BN_CLICKED) (as Chris comments). You can use GetDlgItem(), look for the WindowText and make your choice. However, this doesn't work for non-US-English. There may be some distance in leveraging the Accessibility API here though.
b) Simulate closing the dialog with PostMessage(WM_CLOSE, m_hWnd). This doesn't always work as expected - some dialogs have no [X] close button and their client code is expecting a specific button to be pressed instead.
c) Simulate user input using the SendInput() API. This worked around dialogs that had anti-popup-killer code in them :)
Our final solution was a rule+heuristic-based approach that had a configuration file which we could tweak when the app/IE dialogs changed their ID's, class names or parent class names.
To close continually a specific popup given that you know the window class name and window caption
#define UNICODE
#include <windows.h>
#pragma comment(lib, "user32")
int main (int nn, char ** aa)
{
while (true) {
HWND iHandle = FindWindow (L"theWindowClassName", L"theWindowCaption");
if (iHandle > 0) SendMessage(iHandle, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_CLOSE, 0);
Sleep (200); // check 5 times per second
}
return 0;
}
if one is not known or too generic (e.g. "Dialog") you can omit it by passing a null
HWND iHandle = FindWindow (L"theWindowClassName", 0);
or
HWND iHandle = FindWindow (0, L"theWindowCaption");
of course this will close all windows with the given names.
So I've got an application whose window behavior I would like to behave more like Photoshop CS. In Photoshop CS, the document windows always stay behind the tool windows, but are still top level windows. For MDI child windows, since the document window is actually a child, you can't move it outside of the main window. In CS, though, you can move your image to a different monitor fine, which is a big advantage over docked applications like Visual Studio, and over regular MDI applications.
Anyway, here's my research so far. I've tried to intercept the WM_MOUSEACTIVATE message, and use the DeferWindowPos commands to do my own ordering of the window, and then return MA_NOACTIVATEANDEAT, but that causes the window to not be activated properly, and I believe there are other commands that "activate" a window without calling WM_MOUSEACTIVATE (like SetFocus() I think), so that method probably won't work anyway.
I believe Windows' procedure for "activating" a window is
1. notify the unactivated window with the WM_NCACTIVATE and WM_ACTIVATE messages
2. move the window to the top of the z-order (sending WM_POSCHANGING, WM_POSCHANGED and repaint messages)
3. notify the newly activated window with WM_NCACTIVATE and WM_ACTIVATE messages.
It seems the cleanest way to do it would be to intercept the first WM_ACTIVATE message, and somehow notify Windows that you're going to override their way of doing the z-ordering, and then use the DeferWindowPos commands, but I can't figure out how to do it that way. It seems once Windows sends the WM_ACTIVATE message, it's already going to do the reordering its own way, so any DeferWindowPos commands I use are overridden.
Right now I've got a basic implementation quasy-working that makes the tool windows topmost when the app is activated, but then makes them non-topmost when it's not, but it's very quirky (it sometimes gets on top of other windows like the task manager, whereas Photoshop CS doesn't do that, so I think Photoshop somehow does it differently) and it just seems like there would be a more intuitive way of doing it.
Anyway, does anyone know how Photoshop CS does it, or a better way than using topmost?
I havn't seen anything remarkable about Photoshop CS that requries anything close to this level of hacking that can't instead be done simply by specifying the correct owner window relationships when creating windows. i.e. any window that must be shown above some other window specifies that window as its owner when being created - if you have multiple document windows, each one gets its own set of owned child windows that you can dynamically show and hide as the document window gains and looses activation.
You can try handle WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING event to prevent overlaping another windows (with pseudo-topmost flag). So you are avoiding all problems with setting/clearing TopMost flag.
public class BaseForm : Form
{
public virtual int TopMostLevel
{
get { return 0; }
}
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool EnumThreadWindows(uint dwThreadId, Win32Callback lpEnumFunc, IntPtr lParam);
/// <summary>
/// Get process window handles sorted by z order from top to bottom.
/// </summary>
public static IEnumerable<IntPtr> GetWindowsSortedByZOrder()
{
List<IntPtr> handles = new List<IntPtr>();
EnumThreadWindows(GetCurrentThreadId(),
(hWnd, lparam) =>
{
handles.Add(hWnd);
return true;
}, IntPtr.Zero);
return handles;
}
protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
if (m.Msg == (int)WindowsMessages.WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING)
{
//Looking for Window at the bottom of Z-order, but with TopMostLevel > this.TopMostLevel
foreach (IntPtr handle in GetWindowsSortedByZOrder().Reverse())
{
var window = FromHandle(handle) as BaseForm;
if (window != null && this.TopMostLevel < window.TopMostLevel)
{
//changing hwndInsertAfter field in WindowPos structure
if (IntPtr.Size == 4)
{
Marshal.WriteInt32(m.LParam, IntPtr.Size, window.Handle.ToInt32());
}
else if (IntPtr.Size == 8)
{
Marshal.WriteInt64(m.LParam, IntPtr.Size, window.Handle.ToInt64());
}
break;
}
}
}
base.WndProc(ref m);
}
}
public class FormWithLevel1 : BaseForm
{
public override int TopMostLevel
{
get { return 1; }
}
}
So, FormWithLevel1 will be always over any BaseForm. You can add any number of Z-order Levels. Windows on the same level behave as usual, but will be always under Windows with level Current+1 and over Windows with level Current-1.
Not being familiar to Photoshop CS it is bit hard to know exactly what look and feel you are trying to achieve.
But I would have thought if you created a modeless dialog window as you tool window and you made sure it had the WS_POPUP style then the resulting tool window would not be clipped to the main parent window and Windows would automatically manage the z-Order making sure that the tool window stayed on top of the parent window.
And as the tool window dialog is modeless it would not interfere with the main window.
Managing Window Z-Order Like Photoshop CS
You should create the toolwindow with the image as the parent so that windows manage the zorder. There is no need to set WS_POPUP or WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW. Those flags only control the rendering of the window.
Call CreateWindowEx with the hwnd of the image window as the parent.
In reply to Chris and Emmanuel, the problem with using the owner window feature is that a window can only be owned by one other window, and you can't change who owns a window. So if tool windows A and B always need to be on top of document windows C and D, then when doc window C is active, I want it to own windows A and B so that A and B will always be on top of it. But when I activate doc window D, I would have to change ownership of tool windows A and B to D, or else they will go behind window D (since they're owned by window C). However, Windows doesn't allow you to change ownership of a window, so that option isn't available.
For now I've got it working with the topmost feature, but it is a hack at best. I do get some consolation in the fact that GIMP has tried themselves to emulate Photoshop with their version 2.6, but even their implementation occasionally acts quirky, which leads me to believe that their implementation was a hack as well.
Have you tried to make the tool windows topmost when the main window receives focus, and non-topmost when it loses focus? It sounds like you've already started to look at this sort of solution... but much more elaborate.
As a note, it seems to be quite well documented that tool windows exhibit unexpected behavior when it comes to z-ordering. I haven't found anything on MSDN to confirm it, but it could be that Windows manages them specially.
I would imagine they've, since they're not using .NET, rolled their own windowing code over the many years of its existence and it is now, like Amazon's original OBIDOS, so custom to their product that off-the-shelf (aka .NET's MDI support) just aren't going to come close.
I don't like answering without a real answer, but likely you'd have to spend a lot of time and effort to get something similar if Photoshop-like is truly your goal. Is it worth your time? Just remember many programmers over many years and versions have come together to get Photoshop's simple-seeming windowing behavior to work just right and to feel natural to you.
It looks like you're already having to delve pretty deep into Win32 API functions and values to even glimpse at a "solution" and that should be your first red flag. Is it eventually possible? Probably. But depending on your needs and your time and a lot of other factors only you could decide, it may not be practical.