Is there a way to create a custom Windows 7 logon screen and UI? I don't mean just customizing the picture, I mean something in the sense of a flash splash screen on a website. And then having the whole UI customized in the sense that, instead of a start button, I have can have like... a plus sign that opens up a customized start menu.
Is there anything in the Windows GUI library that will enable this? I know quite a few languages except for assembly, not sure if it would require that anyway.
In other words, if you go to www.sony.com you see how it loads up? Is that possible in a Windows environment? If not, where or how could I do it in another environment? Thanks!
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I'm developing a app that will be available at a regional fair and the public will use it to quickly download "perks" to theirs pen-drives. BUT when you move your mouse to the top-right corner of the screen a "menu" appears (there's a similar thing on tablets) and it enables the user to quit/switch-out-of my app, and that I can't allow! How do I block that?
You have to wait for Windows 8.1 i.e. 18th October. 8.1 offers such thing to manage. Moreover it also offers kiosk mode. Through which you can allow only one app to be open on top most.
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This is not under the control of your application, it's a feature of the operating system. And as far as I know, there's no way to block it. Typically such changes would be done through group policy settings, but at least in Windows 8, there's no such control available. I'm not sure about Windows 8.1, although I haven't stumbled upon any mention of such features there, either.
Also, this is not the only way for the user to switch out of your application. He could also drag the app down from the top and close it or go to the lower bottom corner to open the start screen, if he's using the mouse. The keyboard would give him even more options, of course.
I have a small utility app written in Visual Basic 6 that has been happily running on XP clients for many years until recently a client who is using Windows 7 has notified and shown me that the behaviour is different.
When my VB app displays the dialog, it remains hidden until the user clicks on it in the taskbar.
I changed the code so rather than using a ".show vbModal" command, I changed to displaying the form with non-modally, and then added various API calls like BringWindowToFront and SetWindowPos to make it top most AND calling .focus on the form, despite these extra instructions the best result I can achieve is to make the form flash prompting the user to click on it.
No matter what I've tried I cannot make the window display topmost, and with focus, without user intervention.
Note. this is an ActiveX exe project and is being called by a Win16 app through COM.
Has anyone else encountered this behaviour and know of a solution?
Any suggestions/advice appreciated, thanks.
Applications can't (without lying to Windows) steal focus. The calling app should really call AllowSetForegroundWindow() (if it's available on win16) to allow the COM process to steal the focus, or call SetForegroundWindow() itself.
See the help for SetForegroundWindow() for the conditions on setting focus.
I have a friend who's working at a company that offers pretty poor support for its developers (scoring a 1/12 on the Joel Test).
Their build process is locked down pretty tight, and depending on the size of project it could take 40+(x2) mouse clicks to deploy. So I thought, "Hey, why not automate it the clicks using the win32api?" (Specifically using Python). I've got him a real nice tool that works just fine except for one issue - the tool that they use has a navigation pane that may or may not be open.
You can open and close it with a button press, but I'm not sure how I could make sure it was either open or closed. It's irrelevant to the build process - the only problem is that it alters where the mouse needs to click on the screen depending on its open status. The application is written in .NET and it exposes a function call that applications are able to use to toggle the panel, so I've been looking around for ideas and so far I've got two of them:
Attach to the process via a debugger and execute the function call somehow.
Take a screenshot at the location of the panels titlebar (which I've got through the win32 API and doesn't appear to change regardless if the panel is hidden or not).
Is there an easier way to figure out the state of this panel? The developers are given an admin account on their machine in addition to their regular account, so I can entertain ideas that require admin access, though I don't think that should be necessary?
UPDATE:
It looks like there's a button that can close the pane. In UIAVerify something shows up as "text" "Navigation" "btnClose". It says its AutomationId is btnClose but it's a ControlType.Text
What technology is this panel built from? Is it standard GDI or WPF? If its GDI, it should have a HWND. You should be able to find this HWND through either a class name or window title. Once you have the HWND, you can get its width.
If its built with WPF, er, I have no idea, but Snoop does this kind of thing, so I know its possible.
I'm not referring to a GUI-less application. I'm trying to have an application based on the NetBeans platform as a System Tray application. I was able to do the System Tray part quite easy but I'm having issues trying to figure out how to Hide/Show the GUI. I'll keep looking in the API meanwhile.
Any ideas?
WindowManager.getDefault().getMainWindow().setVisible(true/false) should work to hide and show the entire GUI, unless it has multiple windows (pure Swing Frame.getFrames() should give you all JFrame based windows, if that helps).
Not sure if that will solve the problem if you want the main window hidden on startup (but if it is a very simple UI, as is true of many tray apps, you might be able to just work with a dead-simple implementation of WindowManager such as WindowManager.Trivial and leave out the standard NetBeans windowing system entirely).
new Windows 7 hides systray icons by default.
what is the recommended way to show information to users now?
I need to have a small clickable icon visible to user so user can access my "tool" anytime. Should I use the gadget to show my GUI instead? Can it communicate with my Delphi app somehow?
Without more information it's a little difficult to provide a recommendation.
However, I would imagine that a sufficiently important tool, the user would simply keep minimized. They could then use Jumplists to access quick functionality.
For example, Live Messenger uses this setup on Win7.
If your users really like your icon/application they can always choose to not hide your application.
The only difference is that only the user can choose which icon is shown, instead of every application claiming it's "real estate".
In my opinion this is a good functionality and if I were you I wouldn't change the application, just provide a first run GUI which explains how to make your tray icon visible in windows 7.
The entire reason why change was made, was to stop programs like yours. If you need to show information, go ahead and do so. But the notification areas ("systray") is not where shortcuts go. For that, you've got the start menu, desktop and/or the quick launch bar (and please let the user decide).