Windows Phone 8 Application Bar Button Long Tap Event - windows-phone-7

I am working on a windows phone 8 c# application. I have to get long tap events of Forward and Backward buttons that I have placed in the Application bar, but found only Click event for application bar button.
Please let me know how to capture the long tap event for an application bar button?
Thanks in Advance

This is not possible. The ApplicationBar API is quite restrictive, which is a deliberate move by Microsoft to ensure consistency. You cannot handle arbitrary events from the ApplicationBar. If you want this kind of behaviour, you will have to build your own UI to support it.
It is worth noting that your users will not expect 'long press' (more commonly referred to as tap-and-hold) behaviour on the app-bar.

Related

How to show the notify icon in taskbar for windows 7?

I implement a notify icon for my application by call Shell_NotifyIcon.
In the default, the notify icon display in the notify icon area instead of task bar in windows 7.
If the user want to show the notify icon in the task bar, he/she need to open the Notification Area Icons control panel item, find the application and set "Show icon and notifications" for the application.
I think it will be difficult to the user with poor windows knowledge. I want to implement this function that show the notify icon in the task bar in my VC++ code or installer. Is it possible? If yes, what should I do?
Appreciate.
No, this is not possible.
Windows 7 introduces a feature where notification icons can be hidden. It is an attempt to reduce the noise created by decades of developers dumping notification icons in the taskbar for no good reason.
In order for that feature to work effectively, there can't be a loophole for applications to get around it, because everyone thinks their application is the most important and the most deserving of prime real estate. Eventually, nothing is sacred anymore.
Raymond Chen has blogged about this very request, and provides some additional background info.
You just create the notification icon and provide the user with instructions in the documentation on how to show it permanently, if they so desire.
Why not just pin your application to the task bar? They can just click it and it will launch the application?

How can I long press ApplicationBarIconButton in Windows Phone 7?

I want to long press ApplicationBarIconButton in wp7, and I need to know the start event and end event during the pressing process, how I do it? thanks!
This is not possible. The ApplicationBar API is quite restrictive, which is a deliberate move by Microsoft to ensure consistency. You cannot handle arbitrary events from the ApplicationBar. If you want this kind of behaviour, you will have to build your own UI to support it.
It is worth noting that your users will not expect 'long press' (more commonly referred to as tap-and-hold) behaviour on the app-bar.

Cocoa accessibility API, can I click a window in the background without activating it?

I've been searching forever for a solution to this, so I thought I'd seek out the brainpower of greater minds than mine. I'm developing a Cocoa app that uses the Accessibility API to manipulate another program (it's a hotkey app). The app I'm controlling typically has multiple windows open, with some hidden behind others. What I would like to do, if it's possible, is to send mouse events to windows using the Accessibility API in a way that presses a button in the window without bringing it to the foreground (interact with the window but don't activate it). The reason I'm trying to do this is that sending the mouse event to this other window will force it to the foreground and disrupt the user's interaction with the foremost window.
This is possible on Windows - apparently, because apps similar to mine do it there - but I'm getting the feeling that this isn't possible with Cocoa, given the way the window manager works. Am I mistaken?
Accessibility is higher-level than that. You send, for example, AXPress actions to AXButton objects, but “press” is not necessarily a click—pressing the space bar while a view is focused, for example, is also a “press”. AXPress is a high-level action that means “do your thing”, which obviously has meaning for some views (such as buttons) and not others (such as fields).
Accessibility activating the application does make sense when you look at it from its intended purpose: Assistive devices for disabled users. If the user “presses” something by whatever means, they probably intend to activate the application and work in it.
Quartz Event Services will get you almost there: You can create an event tap for the process you want to control, and you can forge events and send them to a tap. The catch is that you can only send events to a tap when the tap fires—i.e., when the application already has an event to deal with. When it doesn't, you're stuck.

Non-modal notification bars?

How can I implement a non-modal sliding notification bar, such as Firefox, Beyond Compare, and VMware Workstation 6.5 use, in client-side Windows apps?
Any language or framework is fine for now; my current app is in Delphi / C++Builder, but I'm also interested in comparing frameworks and prototyping some UIs.
Related question: This question asks about doing so in Java.
Beyond Compare's notification bar doesn't slide, it just pops open, so I can't offer any help on that. The notification bar itself is just a TPanel with a TImage and TLabel for the image/text. It's placed on the main window at design time and it's set to align bottom. Normally it's hidden, and when there's a message to display we set the Visible property to true.
There's different ways to hide the notification, depending on how you want it to behave. In BC we install keyboard and mouse hooks (SetWindowsHookEx with WH_KEYBOARD or WH_MOUSE) and hide it on key up and mouse button events. Alternatively, like Mark said, you could hide it after a delay, add a close button to the side, or just watch for specific events in your app and manually hide it then.
In Delphi, I believe that you can change a property on the Dialog itself (change the window type away from "Dialog" and select the standard windowed alternative). Sorry I cannot be more specific, it has been about two years since I last worked on a Delphi app.

How do I get keyboard events in an NSStatusWindowLevel window while my application is not frontmost?

After creating a translucent window (based on example code by Matt Gemmell) I want to get keyboard events in this window. It seems that there are only keyboard events when my application is the active application while I want keyboard events even when my application isn't active but the window is visible.
Basically I want behavior like that provided by the Quicksilver application (by blacktree).
Does anybody have any hints on how to do this?
There are two options:
Use GetEventMonitorTarget() with a tacked-on Carbon run loop to grab keyboard events. Sample code is available on this page at CocoaDev.
Register an event trap with CGEventTapCreate. Sample code can be found in this thread from the Apple developer mailing list.
Edit: Note that these methods only work if you check off “Enable access for assistive devices” in the Universal Access preference pane.
A simpler route that may work better for you is to make your app background-only. The discussion on CocoaDev of the LSUIElement plist key explains how to set it up. Basically, your application will not appear in the dock or the app switcher, and will not replace the current application's menu bar when activated. From a user perspective it's never the 'active' application, but any windows you open can get activated and respond to events normally. The only caveat is that you'll never get to show your menu bar, so you'll probably have to set up an NSStatusItem (one of those icon menus that show up on the right side of the menu bar) to control (i.e. quit, bring up prefs, etc.) your application.
Edit: I completely forgot about the Non-Activating Panel checkbox in Interface Builder. You need to use an NSPanel instead of an NSWindow to get this choice. This setting lets your panel accept clicks and keyboard input without activating your application. I'm betting that some mix of this setting and the Carbon Hot Keys API is what QuickSilver is using for their UI.
Update:
Apple actually seems to have changed everything again starting with 10.5 BTW (I recently upgraded and my sample code did not work as before).
Now you can indeed only capture keydown events setting up an event tap if you are either root or assistive devices are enabled, regardless on which level you plan to capture and regardless if you selected to capture (which allows you to modify and even discard events) or to be listen only. You can still get information when flags have changed (actually even change these) and other events, but keydown under no other circumstances.
However, using the carbon event handler and the method RegisterEventHotKey() allows you to register a hotkey and you'll get notified when it is pressed, you neither need to be root for that nor do you need anything like assistive devices enabled. I think Quicksilver is probably doing it that way.

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