I am trying to develop a MacOS application using Xcode and Cocoa. My intent is to create an overlay on the user's screen that is mostly transparent, and does not register input. For example, an application like f.lux tints the colour of your entire screen like a global overlay, but you can still click on-screen items, as mouse clicks go right through (assuming that it's an overlay). How can I get started with achieving a similar overlay/widget?
Related
There's an app called Intermission that creates a whole screen overlay:
I tried creating a floating panel which utilizes NSPanel (adapted from https://cindori.com/developer/floating-panel), but it is unable to expand beyond the toolbar/app bar.
I know I can create a new window in full screen mode and achieve a similar result, however I want to draw this overlay directly on top of the screen without entering full screen mode. How can I achieve this result in the way the Intermission app does it?
I figured it out! The trick is to set NSWindow.Level to .popUpMenu. This allows it to appear above the menubar and dock.
So I have next problem:
I have two monitors and do video translation from web camera on one of them(secondary). I do it in full screen mode using
put_FullScreenMode().
It works fine but when I click any mouse button on area of primary monitor, window with video translation wrap into just window mode.
How can I save full screen mode working with primary monitor?
At the first, I move my video to the left (on secondary monito from primary) and use full screen mode.
if(monitors.GetCount() > 1)
gx.pVW->put_Left(primaryRect.right);
gx.pVW->put_FullScreenMode(OATRUE);
gx.pVW->put_Visible(OATRUE);
Thank you for your time.
[Much] older applications took advantage of FullScreenMode since API supplied a specific "full screen renderer" filter which efficiently took care of full screen presentation. Since then video adapters found their way into stretching of presented video and full screen mode become unnecessary. Windowed mode of video renderer (you are using) was also not a recommended mode compared to windowless any longer.
You would be better off using renderer in windowless mode right in your UI, in your window, form or dialog. Using borderless window hosting video renderer you can easily imitate full screen mode without actually change of display mode. Such window remains normal window and does not need to go back from full screen with another UI activity, e.g. such that happens on another monitor.
VMR filters themselves demonstrate the two ways of going fullscreen in their Filter Config property page:
Set Fullscreen does it the way you do and suffer from the mentioned issue. The other method does full screen mode using borderless window stretched to the extent of a monitor.
See also related discussion:
IVideoWindow::put_FullScreen returning only native video size
i want to make an animated wallpaper for windows. So far i have only expreience with Mac OS X programming and i'm new to windows. So i decided to work with QT because it seems that there is more help out there.
Until now i have created the app in a borderless window in qt. It work quiet fine.
But is there a way in QT to change the level of the window so that its appear above the windows wallpaper but behind the icons?
EDIT:
Ok if found a simple solution.
After some testing with the hints form kusg1 I figured out when there is a transparent window mouse events going still to the desktop.
I actualy want have this website has wallpaper: Ticketack. - So i created a frameless window which stays on bottom and has a transparent background and displays the text. Beside this i can change the windows wallpaper directly to get the background of the clock.
So clock text is not behind the icons but i think this will be ok.
Just some ideas: Use the windows flag as Qt::Window | Qt::FramelessWindowHint + Windows Stay at bottom hint, and set the content of the widget with your animated content (the suitable candidate is to use QGraphicsView).
The widget needs two main tasks:
Upon launching, it grabs the desktop background as pixmap and do overlay with the animated content (this needs to have the desktop to be wallpaper-less for simple scenario).
The widget needs to capture mouse and focus event and channel back to actual window command if the user wants to click the icon on the desktop.
Update:
Some pointers for the implementation:
For managing desktop icon, there is a good article here! (also found from SO).
Qt example and demos has an example on the taking desktop snapshot, the snippet is: QPixmap::grabWindow(QApplication::desktop()->winId());
Answer to your question: no, there isn't.
However, you can try something like this using Windows API: How to draw directly on the Windows desktop, C#?
Im writing an application for workers in our factory and one of requirements is that they should be able to take images using camera integrated in PDA with WM6.5.
The main difficulty is, that thay MUST NEVER EVER be able to enter windows, Start button, desktop etc. They are allowed ONLY to see my fullscreen application.
I succesfully deactivated BlueTooth + red, green and volume buttons (if you are interested, im pasting links here)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=546737
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb431750.aspx
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vssmartdevicesvbcs/thread/a4f9f41d-47a8-4080-8613-2c2ddcf4c012/
And now I have to implement the camera function. But as CameraCaptureDialog opens a new dialog and shows start button, task bar and allows user to open list of applications, I must not use it.
I must create my own dialog that will show the Live Preview in a panel or in an imageBox and photo will be taken using a button.
I searched the whole internet and found only DirectShow.NETCF (but people do not recommend it) and CameraCaptureDialog.
Can I somehow redirect the CameraCaptureDialog to my dialog? Or can I access camera directly via .NET framework? Or can I modify the CameraCaptureDialog not to show Start button, menu etc?
Looks like you have a bit of a challenge. I agree that Directshow is a questionable solution, but it may be your only option. I did get http://alexmogurenko.com/blog/directshownetcf/ to work, but only on low resolutions.
A better option might be to find a device that does not show the menu bar/start button. AFAIK, the HTC HD2 has a very clean Cameracapturedialog..
Good luck.
I have my laptop default screen and second screen. How can I write RealBasic, VisualBasic (Java not possible) application which can allow me to paint on desktop (both screen)?
Most likely you won't be able to draw directly to the screen, but you could potentially grab screenshots of each screen and then draw onto those. Depending on what exactly you're trying to do with your application, it would almost definitely be a more realistic goal to grab a screenshot of each screen and then simply display the screenshots in standard windows that take up the entire screen, letting you then edit and "draw" onto the screen there.
Another option would be to create a transparent window, and then intercept mouse clicks and present information on that window.
If you're using RB on a Mac, you can use the Monkeybread Software Plugin to create a NSWindowMBS and modify the alpha value or an OverlayWindowMBS. It looks like you're trying to do this on Windows, though, so this won't work.