Im developing a software in Embarcadero C++ Builder 2006 which uses the component "TCategoryButtons". This component gives me the possibility to reorder the buttons (TButtonItem). Whenever I do this, it triggers the event OnReoderButton and DoReorderButton. I don't remember the exact sequence.
My question is: is there how to prevent the button reordering in some cases without disabling the AllowReorder property? Can I access the method DoReorderButton (which seem so be protected)? What im looking for is a way to disable the reordering if the button comes from or goes to an specific position. Would be glad if anyone could help me, or give me an idea how to do such thing.
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Essentially I'm trying to learn more about the Win32 api, how certain classes/elements are created, destroyed, what items make them up etc.. Dissecting windows if you will for a project of mine.
I'm very curious at the moment what popups/tool tips/hover effects ubiquities to all windows applications are made up of. My main goal is to grab text from any tooltip/hover thingy/WS_POPUP?
If someone knows that is great but I'd also like to have the tools to research it myself.
I'm not even sure what to google to be honest to get me on the right path. I've tried some C++ code to print class names and fetch the text from what I think might be a msgbox but no dice so far.
The MiniSpy tool on Codeproject comes in handy in situations like this because it uses the corner of the spy window as the location, not the mouse.
Most modern mice have a feature called “debounce” that prevents them from clicking more than once when the buttons bounce. My mouse unfortunately does not which leads it to send two or more clicks when I only want to send one. I want to prevent this from happening using C++.
I have two ideas for how to do this. One is by installing a low level mouse hook to block clicks that occur in too quick succession, and the other is by filtering the messages sent to applications in the same way.
However, I don’t know how to do either of these things, or if they are even possible. I tried searching for the solution but I couldn’t find anything.
I found instructions on how to install a low level mouse hook, the issue is the details and the filtering of clicks. If anyone could tell me which of my two ideas are possible, which one is better, or if there is another way that will work, that would be great.
Edit: I’ve since found out that PeekMessage has exactly the functionality that I am looking for, but only for windows from the current thread, whereas I need to remove messages from all windows. Based on this, I assume my only option is the hook.
There might be something wrong with the way I search for things but here is my problem. I'm looking for a way to implement a custom editing tool within the properties tool window in the Visual Studio editor. I've been looking through several documentation references, and they all lead to the use of different assemblies, but I can't get anything to work the way that I want.
First of all, I tried using the UITypeEditor class, with the step-by-step tuto I found here : https://learn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/dotnet/api/system.drawing.design.uitypeeditor?view=net-5.0
The problem I faced was that it only seemed to be working with Winforms projects, and I'm trying to use this with a WPF project.
Afterwards, I tried following this tutorial, in order to create a project template : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/creating-a-basic-project-system-part-1?view=vs-2019
This has led me to think that the methods used in the tutorial might have been either deprecated or improved with the used of AsyncPackages instead of ProjectPackages, and the appearance of the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Flavor assembly that seem to render useless the ProjectNode class (it doesn't even show up anymore, the method has been replaced with a void).
The last bit I tried exploring was the use of the ProjectSystem, as documented here : https://github.com/microsoft/VSProjectSystem
It was actually worse because I couldn't get it to work like I wanted, the project type I was creating could not register C# files and I wasn't able to add new classes (I might need to dig a bit deeper here but I don't know where to look).
So basically, I'm looking for help to extend the properties tool window, through an editor within the window, or a modal window opened by clicking on an ellipsis button in the properties window.
Thank you for reading this, if you have any info, I'm very interested.
I've actually found a thread leading to what I was trying to do here. This tutorial leads to a way to implement a customized editor, either inline, extended or in another dialog window. This was the thing I needed, and with a few tweaks I managed doing what I wanted.
OK, so my Windows application involves a window that, among other things, has a list of objects in a pane. Each object has 8 boolean values that need to be determined — so I'd like a list of the objects, with eight columns of checkboxes after. I'm not using MFC, should that be relevant.
ListView looks the way I want it to, but apparently it doesn't accept checkboxes in SubItems (the LVS_EX_CHECKBOXES style only gives each row a checkbox on the left).
So what I need is some kind of alternative to ListView that does allow this. I've been looking, but nothing I've found seems to work.
I have seen reference to some DataGridView control, but I don't see that as an option in my Visual Studio 2010 "toolbox" — how does one access it, is it even available for non-MFC C++ projects? Most references to it seem to be for VB or C#.
Another thing I found is is this custom ListView, but it, again, seems to be for C# and not C++. I'd certainly accept suggestions on how to use this resource in my code, if there's a simple way to interface with the C# dialogue (I'm completely unfamiliar with C#).
Anyway, any thoughts, suggestions, or tips anyone has, would be most appreciated!
EDIT: This should maybe go in a new question, but it doesn't really seem deserving an entire question on its own: MFC seems to have more support for this kind of thing (insofar as most of the custom controls I can find to download are for MFC). My project does not actually require being non-MFC, it just is, at the moment. How much work am I looking at to convert it?
Well, I've taken the plunge and started using MFC; the CGridCtrl I downloaded seems to be working pretty well, though I still have a lot of work on it. I'm going to call this the answer, then, since there doesn't seem to be another forthcoming.
What is the best way for, using WinApi, find a given control in a external program window?
For example, I'm trying to change Internet Explorer's url text box. I am having trouble getting programatically the handle to the text box. I know its type is "Edit" but I'd like to avoid having to search through all the child windows for the "Edit" control (that's how I'm currently doing).
Is there any kind of unique identifier for a given control on a window? I tried using "Control ID" but it doesn't seem to be working.
Thanks
When you're delving into the windows of another application that wasn't designed to give you any particular special access to its windows, then you don't really have any simple solution. Functions like FindWindowEx, GetWindow, EnumChildWindows, and the rest are what you have to work with.
However, it's often not a great idea to even do this. Internet Explorer may have certain types of windows in a certain hierarchy in the particular version that you're developing against right now. But those windows and hierarchy may be different in previous versions and could be considerably different in future versions. You have no guarantee about these things.
In some cases, you might do well to investigate if there are alternative and more official ways to control the other program. For instance, Internet Explorer exposes a COM object that can be used for many purposes. Because this is an official interface, you have better guarantees about what previous versions this will be supported on and that it won't break for future versions.
The best way to do it is find it step by step.. E.g. Find the IE window with FindWindow, then find the child of that with FindWindowEx, then find the child of that with FindWindowEx ... until you get down to the textbox.
There is 1 program I can think of that will generate VB code from dragging a icon from the application to any part of any other application.. VB is way old but it'll give you a very good idea how to do it!
It's called API Spy, found under 'Downloadable Applications (Windows Only)' on http://patorjk.com/blog/software/