Bona fide transiant windows with WinAPI? - c++

I want to create a Window like when a context menu pops up or clicking the menubar. I want a Window that will be like this and that I can take over its paint event. Sort of like what is created when you select a sub tool in Photoshop.
EDIT:I want to know how to create controls like the one that comes when you select a sub tool in Photoshop, these do not seem to have a parent window. Those little description popups are a good example of this type of window, and menu items, those rectangles have no parent window.
Thanks
EDIT2: see this: http://cdn-viper.demandvideo.com/media/CB3C805F-421E-45AE-8359-39D59D8F0165/jpeg/20412728-192C-462A-AF8E-1F30BA77AE05_2.jpg
You will notice the window for the sub tools, it is not constrained to a parent window.

But how do they get a nice shadow
around it, and how does it still stay
with the main window without a parent?
That's your real question.
There are several ways of getting the shadow. One is that the window is actually two windows, the "shadow" plus the "main" window.
When you create the flyout window (that's what it's called), you position it near the toolbar. If the toolbar gets a WM_MOVE message, it's your responsibility to call MoveWindow() on the flyout to keep it lined up.
Edited to add
The dwExStyle parameter of CreateWindowEx() should include WS_EX_LAYERED and probably WS_EX_TRANSPARENT, because the 'shadow' will use alpha blending. The hWndParent parameter is the application's main window. The x and y parameters must be calculated as an offset of whatever button the window is to be associated with.

Related

What is the best way to create custom menu with WinAPI

Since there is no way to deep customizing (a gradient background for example) win32 controls (such as buttons, menu items e.t.c) many people advise to create an own custom control.
And if I need a custom button I will use WM_MOUSEMOVE, WM_LBUTTONDOWN and a shadow buffer. I will draw all controls on the shadow buffer and then use BitBlt(hDC, ...) for my window.
But if I want to create a custom menu I must to foresee that menu can be drawn outside of the client area.
At first I need to mouse tracking outside of the client area. SetCapture(hWnd) seems to be a bad solution as it blocks mouse tracking for windows below.
Then I need to draw/erase items outside of my window. Erasing with InvalidateRect(NULL, NULL, TRUE/FALSE) seems to be a bad solution too as it cause of blinking.
What is the best approach to create custom menu with WinAPI?
Runtime menus that can appear anywhere on the screen can be shown with TrackPopupMenu() function. Create the menu with CreateMenu(), AppendMenu() etc, then show it with TrackPopupMenu().

Creating a Transparent Child window on top of non-transparent Parent Window (win32)

I have a program which is not written by me. I dont have its source and the developer of that program is developing independently. He gives me the HWND and HINSTANCE handles of that program.
I have created a child window ON his window, using win32 api.
First thing I need is to make this child window have transparency on some area and opaque on other area(like a Heads up display(HUD) for a game), so that the user may see things in both windows.
The second thing that I need is to direct all the input to the parent window. My child window needs no input.
I know that WS_EX_TRANSPARENT only makes the child draw at the end like in painters algorithm.
I cant use WS_EX_LAYERED because its a child window.
p.s.
I have looked everywhere but didn't find any solution though there were similar questions around the internet.
Actually this is a HUD like thing for that game. I can't draw directly on parent window because of the complexity with multi-threads any many other reasons.
-- EDIT ---------------------------
I am still working on it. I am trying different ways with what you all suggested. Is there a way to combine directX and SetWindowRgn() function or directx with BitBlt() function? I think that will do the trick. Currently I am testing all the stuff as a child window and a Layered window.
You can use WS_EX_LAYERED for child windows from Windows 8 and up.
To support earlier versions of windows, just create a level layered window as a popup (With no chrome) and ensure its positioned over the game window at the appropriate location. Most users don't move the windows they are working with all the time, so, while you will need to monitor for the parent window moving, and re position the HUD, this should not be a show stopper.
Not taking focus (in the case of being a child window) or activation (in the case of being a popup) is more interesting, but still quite do-able:- The operating system does not actually automatically assign either focus, or activation, to a clicked window - the Windows WindowProc always takes focus, or activation, by calling SetFocus, or some variant of SetActiveWindow or SetForegroundWindow on itself. The important thing here is, if you consume all mouse and non client mouse messages without passing them on to DefWindowProc, your HUD will never steal activation or keyboard focus from the Game window as a result of a click.
As a popup window, or a window on another thread, you might have to manually handle any mouse messages that your window proc does get, and post them to the game window. Otherwise, responding to WM_NCHITTEST with HTTRANSPARENT (a similar effect to that which WS_EX_TRANSPARENT achieves) can get the system to keep on passing the mouse message down the stack until it finds a target.
OK friends, finally I did some crazy things to make it happen. but its not very efficient, like using DirectX directly for drawing.
What I dis:
Used (WS_EX_TRANSPARENT | WS_EX_LAYERED | WS_EX_ TOOLWINDOW) and () on CreateWindowEx
After creating the window, removed (WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME | WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE | WS_EX_STATICEDGE) from window styles, and also removed (WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME | WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE | WS_EX_STATICEDGE | WS_EX_APPWINDOW) from extended window styles.
This gives me a window with no borders and its also now shown in the taskbar. also the hittest is passed to whatever that is behind my window.
Subclassed the window procedure of the other window and got the
WM_CLOSE,WM_DESTROY, to send the WM_CLOSE or WM_DESTROY respectively to my window
WM_SIZE,WM_MOVE, to resize and move my window according to the other window
WM_LBUTTONUP,WM_RBUTTONUP,WM_MBUTTONUP, to make my window brought to the top, and still keep focus on the other window, so that my window doesn't get hidden behind the other window
Made the DirectX device have two passes:
In the first pass it draws all the elements in black on top of a white background and copy the backbuffer data to an another surface (so it give a binary image of black & white).
In the second pass it draws the things normally.
Another thread is created to keep making the window transparency by reading that black & white surface, using the SetWindowRgn() function.
This is working perfectly, the only thing is it's not very good at making things transparent.
And the other issue is giving alpha blending to the drawn objects.
But you can easily set the total alpha (transparency) using the SetLayeredWindowAttributes() function.
Thanks for all the help you guys gave, all the things you guys told me was used and they guided me, as you can see. :)
The sad thing is we decided not to use this method because of efficiency problems :(
But I learned a lot of things, and it was an awesome experience. And that's all that matters to me :)
Thank You :)
You can make a hole in the parent window using SetWindowRgn.
Also, just because it is not your window doesn't mean you can't make it a layered window.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997507.aspx
Finally, you can take control of another window by using subclassing - essentially you substitute your Wndproc in place of theirs, to handle the messages you wish to handle, then pass the remainder to their original wndproc.

How to add statusbar correctly?

Currently it is floating on top of my rendered window, i dont think thats good for few reasons:
1) i waste rendering time for rendering stuff that isnt visible.
2) it must be rendered every frame again when i wouldnt be updating the whole statusbar every frame anyways.
So how i could create a window where it leaves space for my statusbar and none of my OpenGL stuff could be rendered in that area?
At this moment i just adjust my viewports in a way that creates empty space for statusbar, but it causes some problems in my current way of doing things. i would have to make my code look much more messier to make it work.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=291682
Edit: Its not a simple question to answer. If you don't know what a child window is under Win32 then you may be in a much better position. However asking someone to give you a full explanation of the windows windowing system is no mean feat.
Here is an overview:
Basically you need to create a child window which can be done using CreateWindow to create a window with the WS_CHILD style and with its hWndParent parameter set to the window handle you want the new window to be a child of.
When you created the window you will have, necessarily, create a window procedure When you call DispatchMessage from your message pump (The Loop that does a Get/PeekMessage and then dispatches the messages is the message pump). Inside the window procedure you can then switch on the message type and handle each message sent to your window.
From here you can handle things like setup. Your initial window will have either a WM_CREATE or a WM_INITDIALOG (Depending on what type of window you create). It is from there that you need to create the child windows (Don't forget to call ShowWindow to make them visible!!). From this point you can then set up the DirectX device to be attached to the child window handle (HWND).
Furthermore if you want to be able to re-size the window then you ALSO need to take into account the WM_SIZE mesage. However I'd strongly recommend trying to get the rest working before even beginning to look into this as it gets very complicated as you will need to destroy and re-create your DirectX device so that it is the right size.
Anyway thats just a simple overview. I hope it helps!
One way may be to make your "rendered window" and "statusbar" both children of a containing window, and to add some code for the WM_SIZE message for that containing window to position the children so they don't overlap.

How to draw something to the screen and have the underlying ui interactive

I seeking solution for Windows first.
I need to add visual effects to screen image without breaking the interactivity of all and every controls, that are on this screen.
The solution can be straightforward:
1. take a screenshot
2. show this screenshot in a separate window, above other windows
3. apply the effect to image, being shown on this window
But, this window (containing screenshot) makes any buttons and other controls below, unreachable for mouse interaction (clicking, hovering)
Is there any way to do this ?
From MSDN's documentation on layered windows...
"Hit testing of a layered window is based on the shape and transparency of the window. This means that the areas of the window that are color-keyed or whose alpha value is zero will let the mouse messages through. However, if the layered window has the WS_EX_TRANSPARENT extended window style, the shape of the layered window will be ignored and the mouse events will be passed to other windows underneath the layered window."
Here's an article about it. Notice this additional warning:
"setting the WS_EX_TRANSPARENT attribute affects the entire window: the user can't close the window using the 'x' button, select it with the mouse, or select any controls on the window. The application can still close the window programmatically."
Depending on what you're actually drawing and where, it might be more appropriate to use Owner-Drawn Controls rather than hover an "onion skin" over your whole window.

Custom dropdown for CComboBox

I'm trying to create a custom dropdown for a derivative of CComboBox. The dropdown will be a calendar control plus some 'hotspots', e.g.
So I figure the best way to achieve this is to have a simple CWnd-derived class which acts as the parent to the calendar control, and have it paint the hotspots itself.
The window needs to be a popup window - I think - rather than a child window so that it isn't clipped. But doing this causes the dialog (on which the combobox control is placed) to stop being the topmost (foreground?) window, leading to its frame being drawn differently:
alt text http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/3474/35148785.png
This spoils the illusion that the dropdown is part of the combobox since its acting more like a modal dialog at this point. Any suggestions on how I make the custom dropdown behave like the regular dropdown?
Are there any other pitfalls I need to watch out for, e.g. focus and mouse capture issues?
When you create your popup window, you need to specify its owner. Owned popup windows will activate their owner when you activate them. Not specifying an owner will cause your window to get activated, which causes the change in the owner you're seeing.
Yeah I had this problem once. A quick google makes me suspect I solved this by using CreateWindowEx() and specifying WS_EX_NOACTIVATE. I have some other code that achieves the same effect by making the window with WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW rather than as a popup window, but I'm not sure of why that was done that way, my intuition would say that making it a popup window would be the way to go.
You can find in the following links two sample project that put in the CComboBox dropdown window a CTreeCtrl or a CListCtrl controls ... similar, you can put whatever you need there. Here is the links:
Tree ComboBox Control
and
List ComboBox Control
I hope this help you.