Is it possible to develop win32 UI application for Pocket PC with multiple dialogs
we need to display each dialog based on user input and hide previous dialog when current dialog is displayed on window.
Thanks in advance
Sure, that sounds a lot like standard application behavior, which is supported. The only thing not supported is MDI. Programmatically it's going to work just like on the desktop, so examples using calls to CreateWindow or CreateDialog will be applicable.
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I would like to know is there a way to drive an existing windows application? I want to execute operations in an application like filling out text fields in a form, hitting next and submit buttons, etc. Basically what a user would do, I wanted to automate those operations. What would be the best way to achieve this?
Thanks
Mukul
It is possible (with limitations and quirks), if that particular Windows application uses native windows (so-called) controls (UI elements). Qt, for example, paints UI elements "by hand", while MFC applications uses Win API UI native (and expanded) elements. So, it depends.
You can explore application and it's UI elements using Spy++ tool inside Visual Studio (there are free alternatives available). Using these tools, you can look up target window class name, ID and other attributes that would help you to find and identify elements of interest using Windows API functions.
One can use EnumDesktopWindows, FindWindowEx, FindWindow, and others, to find window and it's inner control of your interest. Then, using SendMessage you can send various messages to set focus, emulate mouse clicks, set text for Edit control, simulate button clicks, etc, etc.
You can write such a program using UI Automation, which allows a program to discover and use the GUI of another application. It's how accessibility tools like screen readers interact with your applications.
I need to create a Win32 application. I am using visual studio. I really like designing my application in Windows Form, which allows graphically designing my window.
However, I cannot use Windows Form (only). I have to use Win32 applicaition. Now, when I create Win32 application, I cannot figure to graphically design my window.
Is there a way to incorporate Windows Form in Win32 application? Or graphically design Win32 window?
(If there is a way to design Win32 applications GUI graphically and it's just me who could not figure it, I would appreciate resources or methods to do so.)
In a Win32 application, you can include a dialog resource that contains controls and layout information for a particular window. Visual Studio includes a graphical dialog resource editor, as do many other Win32 resource editing applications. This will be somewhat similar to what you're used to with the WinForms designer, albeit with a few limitations. Win32 is a much older technology than WinForms and wasn't really designed with RAD (rapid application development) principles in mind.
When you create a new Win32 project based on the template in Visual Studio, you already get one dialog resource created for you: the About box. If you double-click on your "ProjectName.rc" file in the Solution Explorer, then expand the "Dialog" resources folder, you'll see it. Double-clicking on it will bring up the Dialog Editor for this dialog window. You can add controls using the familiar Toolbox window, and customize them using the familiar Properties window.
You will still need to write code that displays the dialog window, of course. There are two basic methods of doing so:
The DialogBox function will display the dialog modally, which means that the user has to close the dialog before they can interact with the rest of your application. Inconvenient for the user, but rather convenient for the programmer because Windows runs the dialog's message loop for you.
The CreateDialog function will display a normal (non-modal) dialog, but requires that you write your own message loop for the dialog window, just as you would for a normal non-dialog window.
You could conceivably design all of the windows for your application this way, by adding separate dialog resources for each of them, but it is not necessarily a good idea. Part of learning a new UI framework is learning how to use that framework the way it is meant to be used. Creating controls and setting their properties through code at runtime is not really that difficult, and it is a lot more powerful than limiting yourself to a fixed layout. (In fact, even when you have a dialog resource with a fixed layout, you'll often want to write similar code to allow customizing those controls at runtime.)
Is it usual to use a Dialog as main Windows? So without registering any user class via RegisterClassEx? Can I do everything I do via CreateWindow()? Why should I create controls such as buttons,editboxes etc via CreateWindow() instead of just making a Dialog and use it as main Window?
I'd also like to know main difference between a dialog and a windows and why use one the first instead of the second.
Thanks
Is it usual to use a Dialog as main Windows?
Yes, it is quite common.
So without registering any user class via RegisterClassEx?
A dialog is usually a predefined window class, so there usually no need for registering.
I'd also like to know main difference between a dialog and a windows and why use one the first instead of the second.
Well, two big differences would be that you cannot resize a dialog box and it has no minimize or maximize buttons (by default, but there are workarounds for this). Keep in mind the name, dialog box. In other words they are used for having a dialog with the user (receive input and displays messages to user). In a sense they are just like any other window, underneath CreateWindowxx, etc. is called, etc. However, they are somewhat predefined windows which can be made quickly and there are limitations to what you can do with them.
Also, a dialog uses a dialog procedure rather than a window procedure, which does some default processing for you, such as initializing some controls, etc.
Yes, an application can be dialog-based. There's even a Wizard for that if your'e using VisualStudio and MFC.
In VS2010, Create New Project > MFC Application. In "Application Type" select Dialog Based. Click through the rest of the Wizard, and you're off to the races.
Dialog-based applications are much simpler, architectually, than other designs such as Document/View. As such, simple things are much easier to "bang out" quickly, but the limitations of the design become apparent when you try to do more complex things. You could end up replicating much of the Doc/View architecture in your dialog-based app in order to build a production-quality Dialog-based application. In that case, did you really save yourself anything?
A dialog is a kind of window just as all of the various controls like buttons are really just windows. You can think of a dialog as being a kind of window with a lot of extra functionality to support the kinds of things that dialogs are used for.
There are two types of dialogs, modal which display and expect you to use them and then dismiss them, and non-modal which display but which do not capture and keep the input focus until they are dismissed. You can see these two types used in applications where a modal dialog is used to display an error or require the user to make some setting and a non-modal acts as a kind of tool box that stays displayed and when you need it, you click on it to do something and other times you are using some other window in the application.
Normally a dialog would not have a menu bar but would instead have all of its controls visible or easily accessible via tabs or some other type of presentation. Visual Studio and other IDEs have dialog designers to allow the placement of various controls along with wizards to allow the controls to be tied to classes and class members.
Which brings up a major difference between a dialog and a window. A window is kind of an empty page and to do things with the page requires more work. A dialog has tools that make the design easy however you are also constrained in large part by the toolbox.
If you have an application that is focused on basically allowing a user to specify certain settings and then do some task, a dialog works fairly well. If you have something that requires more complicated user interaction, an application window as the base from which all of your other dialogs and controls will be managed and manipulated will be more necessary.
I want to get the window handle of some controls to do some stuff with it (requiring a handle). The controls are in a different application.
Strangely enough; I found out that many controls don't have a windows handle, like the buttons in the toolbar (?) in Windows Explorer. Just try to get a handle to the Folder/Search/(etc) buttons. It just gives me 0.
So.. first question: how come that some controls have no windows handle? Aren't all controls windows, in their hearts? (Just talking about standard controls, like I would expect them in Windows Explorer, nothing customdrawn on a pane or the like.)
Which brings me to my second question: how to work with them (like using EnableWindow) if you cannot get their handle?
Many thanks for any inputs!
EDIT (ADDITIONAL INFORMATION):
Windows Explorer is just an example. I have the problem frequently - and in a different application (the one I am really interested in, a proprietary one). I have "physical" controls (since I can get an AutomationElement of those controls), but they have no windows handle. Also, I am trying to send a message (SendMessage) to get the button state, trying to find out whether it is pushed or not (it is a standard button that seems to exhibit that behaviour only through that message - at least as far as I have seen. Also, the pushed state can last a lot longer on that button than you would expect on a standard button, though the Windows Explorer buttons show a similar behaviour, acting like button-style checkboxes, though they are (push)buttons). SendMessage requires a window handle.
Does a ToolBar in some way change the behaviour of its child elements? Taking away their window handle or something similar? (Using parent handle/control id for identification??) But then how to use functions on those controls that require a windows handle?
If they don't have a handle, they're not real controls, they're just drawn to look like controls.
But of course, the toolbar buttons in Windows Explorer do have window handles, they're part of a toolbar. Use the toolbar manipulation functions to interact with them, not EnableWindow.
Or, better yet, use the documented APIs for things like search. Reverse-engineering Windows Explorer has never ended well for anyone, least of all the poor Windows Shell team, saddled with years of backwards-compatibility hacks for certain developers who thought that APIs are for everyone else. Whatever you do manage to get to work is very likely to break on the next version of Windows.
The controls you are talking about are using the ToolbarWindow32 class. If you want to interact with them then you'll need to use the toolbar control APIs/message. For example for enabling buttons you'd want to use TB_ENABLEBUTTON.
You can implement the controls yourself using GDI, OpenGL or DirectX. Try Window Detective on Mozilla Firefox and you will see that there is only one window. Controls in dialog boxes are not windows known to Windows.
Under Windows 7, IE 8 shows every open tab as a taskbar thumbnail. How can I achieve this in my own app?
MSN Messenger exhibits the same behavior.
I believe that this is done with the Windows API Code Pack: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack
And here's a blog post explaining how "custom window previews can be used to expose a list of child windows (browser tabs) as thumbnail- and peek-enabled windows in the taskbar." Sounds like what you need: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/sasha/archive/2009/02/12/windows-7-taskbar-apis.aspx
The following article should help. There are several new taskbar features in Windows 7, all of them are discussed at the link below.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd942846.aspx
Note that the Aero Peek feature has nothing to do with task bar buttons, it just lets you make all windows fully transparent to preview your desktop and gadgets. What you were actually looking for is "Windows 7 Grouped Taskbar Thumbnails", in case you need to do additional searches.
This is the best reference I've got. Note that I'm assuming native code here, a .NET equivalent could be p/invoke'd up in a fairly straight forward manner.
It boils down to the following:
For each tab, create a proxy window
For these windows call DwmSetWindowAttribute to set DWMWA_FORCE_ICONIC_REPRESENTATION & DWMWA_HAS_ICONIC_THUMBNAIL
Whenever these proxy windows receives a WM_DWMSENDICONICLIVEPREVIEWBITMAP message, render the corresponding thumbnail into the proxy window
Whenever a proxy window receives a WM_ACTIVATE, switch to the correct tab
You also need to handle WM_SYSCOMMAND
Grab your ITaskbarList4
Use it to register each of your proxy windows as a tab
Manage tab order and what not via the ITaskbarList4 interface (this includes activating tabs)
It seems like there should be a better way to do this, but its all I'm aware of at the moment.