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.
Related
The concept of DWM window manipulation/Window Styles is a bit new to me and I am experimenting with a few new situations. I would be obliged if someone could help point me in the right direction.
Also, how do you keep the 2nd window exactly behind the 1st instead of another window from another application in between them?
You need process the WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING message on one of the windows and use SetWindowPos to make sure you keep the z-order. You can either use SetWindowPos to send the window below a message that it should precede the current window, or call it from the second window to the first one with the HWND_TOP argument when the z-order changes.
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.
Hello there I have issue with overlapping of child windows,I have created a software with menu driven interface( IDR_MAINFRAME - CFormView
etc) and upon clicking one of the menu items another child-window appears( Dialog based ) where I do the calculations as a normal
calculator.Now if I open any other entry say conversion of metrics which is also in menu entry then on overlapping with any other such
window the background windows gets horribly disfigured and if i move about the calculator or the metrics conversion calculator randomly
they get disfigured and its a mess.Also I have put up a bitmap image on the background.Upon moving the calculator the background image also
gets erased.
Please let me know about how to handle this issue.I have googled and found that handling of paint messages or WM_ERASEBKGND helps ..but I
have tried this piece of code which just doesn't help in OnEraseBkGnd();
BOOL COfficesoftDlg::OnEraseBkgnd(CDC* pDC)
{
// TODO: Add your message handler code here and/or call default
CRect Rect;
GetClientRect(Rect);
//ClientToScreen(&Rect);
//this->ScreenToClient(&Rect);
this->InvalidateRect(Rect);
return CDialog::OnEraseBkgnd(pDC);
}
how can i achieve the smooth overlapping of different windows like a notepad overlapping a word document or even a calculator or even a VC6
IDE in my project.
Please explain it with an example .I am just a newbie and I need to understand in detail...thanks and regards
Override OnEraseBkgnd and return true so it stops erasing the background you're painting. Returning TRUE says that you've done the work. If you simply call the base class implementation, it's going to do this for you, and you'll lose the background until it gets a chance to paint.
You're not getting paint messages to the parent window for some reason. Make sure you're calling the modal in the correct manner. DoModal() works fine. Make sure you're not just creating the modal and showing it.
If your windows are children on the same dialog/window and they overlap or you have children on either dialog/window, make sure that you use clipchildren and clipsiblings (if children on a window overlap). Otherwise they'll get to paint in any order they choose artifacting all over the place.
Ensure that you're painting to memory and bitblting back to your dialog, otherwise you'll get a flashing effect.
I want to be able to open a GUI application using CreateProcess in a main process and have the GUI display in a window I create from within the main process. Does anyone know how to achive this? Thanks!
If you are in control of both applications then yes.
This is how screen savers display in the screen saver control panel - the control panel passed the dialogs window on the command line, and the .scr file - which is just a simple exe - creates its window as a child using the given hwnd as its parent.
Capturing a previously written top level window and forcing it to exist within your own frame is however not well supported.
Again, it is something you can easilly try: I wrote a test app that created a empty frame window, did a FindWindow for copies of Notepad, and reparented the notepad window to be a child of my frame.
So it does work: in this simple scenario at least, but there is no guarantee: more complex applications that modify their own frame styles might very well break, additionally having a child window and parent window on different threads introduces the possibility of deadlocks.
No you can't do this.
Something that might work... You could start the process though, and then using the window handle apply a series of changes to the window to take off the frame. Then you could move it to the position of some other placement control in your window and when you have move/resize events you also resize this child window.
I want to allow a user to drag my Win32 window around only inside the working area of the desktop. In other words, they shouldn't be able to have any part of the window extend outside the monitor(s) nor should the window overlap the taskbar.
I'd like to do it in a way that does cause any stuttering. Handling WM_MOVE messages and calling MoveWindow() to reposition the window if it goes off works, but I don't like the flickering effect that's caused by MoveWindow().
I also tried handling WM_MOVING which prevents the need to call MoveWindow() by altering the destination rectangle before the move actually happens. This resolves the flickering problem, but another issue I run into is that the cursor some times gets aways from the window when a drag occurs allowing the user to drag the window around while the cursor is not even inside the window.
How do I constrain my window without running into these issues?
Windows are, ultimately, positioned via the SetWindowPos API.
SetWindowPos starts by validating its parameters by sending the window being sized or moved a WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING message, and then a WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED message notifying the window proc of the changed size and/or position.
DefWindowProc handling of these messages is to, in turn, send WM_GETMINMAXINFO and then WM_SIZE or WM_MOVE messages.
Anyway, handle WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING to filter both user, and code, based attempts to position a window out of bounds.
Keep in mind that users with multi-monitor setups may have a desktop that extends into negative x- and y-coordinates, or that is not rectangular. Also, some users use alternative window managers such as LiteStep, which implement virtual desktops by moving them off-screen; if you try to fight this, your application will break for these users.
You can do this by handling the WM_MOVING message and changing the RECT pointed to by the lParam.
lParam: Pointer to a RECT structure with the current position of the window, in screen coordinates. To change the position of the drag rectangle, an application must change the members of this structure.
you may also want to handle WM_ENTERSIZEMOVE to know when the window is beginning to move, and WM_EXITSIZEMOVE
WM_GETMINMAXINFO is what you seem to be looking for.