I have a native C++ MFC app. It has a main window based on CWnd, and user action can create a modal dialog. While the dialog is active, I want the main window to disappear, the dialog to be visible, and the main window's icon to remain in the task bar.
How can I accomplish this?
If I hide the main window (ShowWindow(SW_HIDE)), the task bar icon disappears. If I minimize the main window (SW_MINIMIZE), the icon remains. However, since the dialog is owned by the main window, this also hides the dialog.
After the dialog is created, clicking on the task bar icon makes the dialog visible. Naturally, I do not want to require the user to do this.
Even if I insert ShowWindow(SW_SHOW) in the dialog's OnInit handler, the dialog remains not visible. Spy++ shows that its visible bit is set, though. Same is true if I add SetWindowActive to OnInit.
I am not interested in changing the UI design. While the dialog is active, the user interacts only with it, and is not interested in anything in the main window. Therefore, the main window should disappear.
Using Windows VS2005 under WinXP32.
Well, in the block of code where you create the dialog and show it modal, you can do whatever you want to the main window of your app (show/hide) as long as you make the desktop window the parent of your dialog. Usually, the constructor for CDialog and derivatives takes a default argument of NULL for the parent window in which the framework ends up substituting AfxGetMainWnd(). Instead pass CWnd::GetDesktopWindow() as the parent of your dialog and then you should probably be able to hide your main window. However, you still might have a problem with the taskbar--but I'll let someone else give hints since I know nothing offhand about it.
In OnInitDialog, add following codes
//Set windows size zero, the windows disappear.
MoveWindow(0,0,0,0);
//If you want it invisible on taskbar. add following codes.
DWORD dwStyle = GetWindowLong(GetSafeHwnd(), GWL_EXSTYLE);
dwStyle &=~WS_EX_APPWINDOW;
dwStyle |= WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW;
SetWindowLong(GetSafeHwnd(), GWL_EXSTYLE, dwStyle);
You're fighting the OS. A modal dialog, by definition, disables but does not hide the "main" (parent) window. If you wanted another window, make a second one, but don't tell the OS to treat it as a modal dialog over the first window.
Perhaps you can resize the main window to a really small size and always keep it behind the modal dialog.
Related
Environment: MFC frame based SDI application
Problem: After closing modal dialog boxes, the bitmap stays displayed/the window beneath doesn't repaint.
Dialog creation:
PortSettings Dlg;
Dlg.DoModal();
I've tried explicitly setting OnCancel() for the dialog class,
void PortSettings::OnCancel()
{CDialog::OnCancel();}
tried calling RedrawWindow from the parent window and the Dialog OnCancel.
This issue happens for all the dialog boxes, and other modal windows that open (Like a file browser) I assume because I am using MFC I've somehow interfered with the underlying Window Proc but I'm not sure how to investigate or what to try.
Solution was multifaceted:
Dialog Window Properties affect the image lingering - in my case, it was necessary to change the dialog frame to "thin" style.
After the Dlg.DoModal() call, call ParentWnd->RedrawWindow(). In the Parent Window's OnPaint, I added a fillSolidRect to repaint the background white. This section is controlled with Boolean logic to only repaint immediately after a dialog closes to avoid flickering.
It is possible to set application-switching window as a Modal window (see definition)?
I mean, this window appears when I press Alt+Ctrl+Tab button at the same time and allows me navigate between opened applications typing "tab" key.
The problem appears when I push/click outside the window (Application-switching window lost focus and disappears).
Are there any way to avoid this problem in C++ MFC? I have tried calling:
CWnd* appSwitchingWnd = GetTopWindow();
appSwitchingWnd .SetFocus();
But it doesn't works...
I will appreciate any kind of help.
I have a modeless CDialog that contains controls, some CButtons and a CScrollbar. The CDialog is parented off of an edit box that I want to keep focus at all times. The problem is that whenever the user uses the controls, clicking a button or on the scrollbar, the control steals focus from the edit box, causing both the parent window to draw without focus (grayed-out header bar), and causing the control to take all the keyboard input. Is there a way for the controls to respond to mouse actions but not steal focus?
The controls and the dialog are all created with WS_CHILD. The controls are parented off the dialog, and the dialog is parented off of the edit box.
I've tried setting focus back after the controls are used, but that causes the parent window to flicker as it loses and then regains focus. Basically I want something that works like a combo box, where the scroll bar can be clicked or dragged around, but keyboard input still goes to the dialog itself, not just the scroll bar, and the whole thing never loses focus.
I haven't done anything like this for a long time, so I'm sure there are a million little details, but I think the starting point is to override the handling of WM_MOUSEACTIVATE.
I am a little confused about child-parent relationship you described.
Can you explain what do you mean by:
The CDialog is parented off of an edit box that I want to keep focus at all times
Any window hosting other windows inside of the client area is a parent of those windows. It is impossible to create window without WS_CHILD that is contained by other window.
Therefore all dialog’s controls are children of this dialog. It is also possible that child window hosts another child window.
CDialog is just an MFC representation of a dialog window; the same applies to other controls. For example CButton is an MFC class that wraps handle of the window’s window that is predefined as window button control.
Dialog never has focus unless is empty (does not have any controls). If dialog contains even one control, this control always has focus.
What focus means is that any given window receives mouse and keyboard messages. Only one control can have focus at any given time. In order for scroll bar to process mouse click or keyboard to move slider, scroll bar must have focus; therefore some other control must give it up.
Combo box drop box (I think this is what you are referring to) is not a child of the dialog. It is a popup window that for the duration has keyboard focus and captures mouse. When it drops down, dialog is deactivated and once dropdown hides, dialog state is changed back to active hence focus never changes, it returns to the control that had focus when dialog was deactivated.
What you are trying to do is probably possible but it would require a lot of coding. Probably hooking messages would do the job but I think it would be going against the stream.
I have one MFC application (exe) that contains two panes in its main UI. This application loads another DLL that also contains one dialog. How can I programatically place a Dialog defined into the DLL, and put it into (within) the pane of the MFC application? The question is not how to programatically retrieve the dialog from the DLL but how to put this dialog 'on the top' (within, inside) of one UI pane that belongs to the application?
My goal is to customize the UI of the application with dialog(s) retrieved from a dll and give the user the feeling that these dialogs all belong to one application UI. Thanks for any hint.
I have some applications with this feature, often with a tab control to alternate between windows.
First I set a frame in the container window, invisible to the user. The frame is just a placeholder to where the dialog window will be.
Then I make an instance of the dialog window as a global variable in the container class, I create the dialog window as a modeless window (using Create(), not DoModal()), move the window to the same RECT of the frame control, and call ShowWindow() to show the window.
Am I understanding you correctly that you don't want the dialogs to appear as dialogs, but rather as content of another window, or as a pane?
In other words, you want to get rid of the dialog's title bar and embed the dialog's content into another window, is that right?
That is possible. You would need to create the dialog without the title bar (change the window style) and make sure that you create the dialog's window as a childwindow of the window where you want the content to go. I can explain this further but I first would like to know if I'm understanding you correctly.
I found the windows style WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW but this changes the title bar. Is there a way to not have the tasktray icon but keep the normal window titlebar?
You usually do want to do this if you have added an alternate means to restore the window - for example placing an icon in the notification tray.
The usual way of ensuring the taskbar does not display your window is to create it with a hidden parent window. Whenever a window has a parent, the parent window is used to create the button - hidden windows are not shown on the taskbar.
Also, WS_EX_APPWINDOW should be removed as that performs the opposite hint to the shell and forces the window onto the taskbar even if it would otherwise not have been shown.