I want my frame to be always on top, but I want it to be really on top. I want no other windows to hide it, even if they are also "always on top". I'm using wx.STAY_ON_TOP and wx.FRAME_FLOAT_ON_PARENT, but still there are windows that appear on top of mine. Also, the taskbar appears on top of my frame, while I'd like it to be behind my frame.
I've tried a lot of things that didn't work, detailed here.
Any idea how to make my frame really on top?
Because their is no standard method in doing so, as it is most often an undesired effect, you can possibly achieve this by frequently setting the topmost flag again to "overrule" any other applications going for the topmost position. You could do this using a timer which sets the value every x ms, or you can try and only set the ontop flag again when the window has lost focus. The events to set the ontop flag are:
EVT_SET_FOCUS
EVT_KILL_FOCUS
Try using this:
wx.Frame.SetFocus()
Related
It is possible to use the SetWindowPos API on Windows to keep a windows always on top of other windows, and there are many questions on StackOverflow dealing with this.
It is possible to keep only part of a Window always visible? I.e. specify a clipping region inside an existing window, and keep only that part visible?
A use case would be the following (on Windows):
User clicks on icon to run app.
User highlights a portion of the screen to focus on (similar to the Snipping Tool on Windows 7)
The highlighted part of the screen remains always visible, even when other windows/programs are moved over the selected region.
I know the issues that would spring up with having other applications that are also set to being topmost. Just curious if this is even possible?
Even if you change part of your window to be transparent to what's below (with a clipping region) it's still going to take all the mouse clicks, etc. that occur over the transparent part.
Your best bet is to create a new smaller window and make it top-most while hiding the main one.
I use the SetWindowPos api to make my window topmost with the HWND_TOPMOST param.
It works fine, but still tooltips are on top of it.
How to make my window on top of all. Is there an api that I'm missing?
Edit: I fixed it with a timer checking the foreground window and then setting mine to topmost.
There is no way to do that, as noted in the Old New Thing blog. TopMost is TopMost. If two windows are competing one must loose. There is no secret MoreTopMost constant.
So yes, I find myself in the dubious position of implementing a SwitchToThisWindow call to force my window to the front. I agree, its not ideal, but its not always possible to argue against product "features" that others deem necessary.
Now, I consider SwitchToThisWindow to be a win over the AttachThreadInput hack to do a forced window switch as its less likely to deadlock, and should SwitchToThisWindow be removed, or cease to function I won't complain.
However, SwitchToThisWindow has the unfortunate side effect of pushing the current foreground window to the bottom of the z-order in addition to bringing the target window to the top when FALSE is passed for the fAltTab parameter, and not doing anything if TRUE is passed.
How can I avoid this 'push current active to z-bottom' behavior without resorting to AttachThreadInput?
Alternatively, MS can just remove AttachThreadInput as a viable workaround and I can just tell my manager that the impossible, is in fact, actually, impossible.
I don't know if this helps, but the only way i found out to bring my window to top reliably is to make the following 2 calls:
ShowWindow(myhwnd, SW_MINIMIZE);
ShowWindow(myhwnd, SW_RESTORE);
Obviously these calls only should be made, when your window currently is not the topmost one in order to avoid flickering. But this also should not have the side effect of bringing the current front window to the bottom of the z order.
When passing fAltTab=FALSE you are actually emulating Alt+Esc. So you could reverse this z-order change with SetWindowPos and its hWndInsertAfter after the SwitchToThisWindow call, but then you are back in ugly hacky-land IMHO.
The question is, do you really need keyboard focus?
Let me suggest another alternative:
If your window is minimized, restore it
Set your window to be topmost, when your window is activated remove the style again.
Call SetForegroundWindow to flash the taskbar button (Or FlashWindowEx)
This should avoid the scenario where a user is typing and ends up performing some action in your UI without even looking at the screen.
Edit:
HWND hwndFgnd=GetForegroundWindow();
SetWindowPos(hwnd,hwndFgnd,0,0,0,0,SWP_NOSIZE|SWP_NOMOVE|SWP_NOACTIVATE);
SetWindowPos(hwndFgnd,hwnd,0,0,0,0,SWP_NOSIZE|SWP_NOMOVE);
..will probably work if you don't want to set the topmost bit at any point (Even if your window is at the top of the z-order, you still can't legally get the focus with SetForegroundWindow)
This is a bad problem I faced too. See my solution here. It works both for Show() and ShowDialog().
I am facing a little annoying design problem. Not easy to give a title of my question.
I must display two windows, one over another one. The first one is a Cocoa window, the second is made with Qt. In the second window, an action is performed, but the user can choose to close this window. He must fall back on the first window.
To display my first window, which is actually a SFAuthorizationPluginView, I do:
[myview displayView];
then, to display the window made with Qt on top of first window:
QWidget* w = openMyScreen();
NSView* v = (NSView*)w->winId();
[[v window] setLevel:2003];
This works well, however there is a small delay before the second window is displayed. We can thus see for a very short time the first window.
I need that the second window stays on top of the first window, because the user can close the second window and must have access to the first window.
Any ideas on a trick how to hide the first window, just the time, the second window appears?
Thanks in advance
NSDisableScreenUpdates and NSEnableScreenUpdates (link) might be useful in this situation. The documentation says:
You typically call this function so that operations on multiple windows appear atomic to the user.
which seems to describe your situation.
A word of unrelated advice though: Don't go setting window levels willy-nilly. A window level of 2003 will likely cause the window to appear over things like the dock or even the menu bar, which would definitely be strange. You should stick to the standard levels declared in NSWindow.h unless you have good reason. NSFloatingWindowLevel might be appropriate (although I'm not sure what level the SFAuthorizationPluginView window is displayed at).
Starting with MacOS 10.4, you can use :
[NSWindow disableScreenUpdatesUntilFlush];
We have a fairly complex GUI, so when certain windows are resized their Redraw() is set to false till the operation is completed. The problem with this is that if the OS "Show window content while dragging" setting is checked, when decreasing the window's size the windows behind it are not repainted. This means I have to force the repaint myself so the remains of the resized window are deleted. I have no problem getting the dimensions of the region that was uncovered. What I'm looking for is best way to cause all windows within that region to repaint their part.
Not being much of a GUI programmer, I can traverse the uncovered region and list the windows in it. Then, I can ask each one of them to repaint its part. But I'm quite certain there has to be a better way to do this...
It is worth mentioning the app is written in PowerBuilder. This means I can call whatever Win32 function I'd like, but have limited control over the GUI behavior and the message handling. If there's a better way to prevent the window's content resize from being visible, or there's a way to make a non-redrawn window clean after itself, I'd love to hear it (just have the limitations above in mind).
I'm curious what version of PowerBuilder you are working in? I do resizing all the time and never run into issues like you are describing.
Maybe you can lay out some more detail on why you need to set your redraws to false within the PowerBuilder environment.
Hope I can help.