Getting the size of a minimized window - winapi

I never knew this, but apparently:
By default, the system reduces a
minimized window to the size of its
taskbar button and moves the minimized
window to the taskbar. A restored
window is a window that has been
returned to its previous size and
position, that is, the size it was
before it was minimized or maximized.
In an application, we want to save the position/size of various windows at exit. This leads to a problem for minimized windows. Our solution is to restore all windows before running the save-state logic, but that just seems hacky. Is there a better way?

How about using GetWindowPlacement?
That returns a WINDOWPLACEMENT structure that contains information about the window's coordinates in the restored position.
Remember that (as Leo Davidson points out in the comments) that you must respect the difference between workspace and screen coordinates. As the WINDOWPLACEMENT documentation explains:
The coordinates used in a
WINDOWPLACEMENT structure should be
used only by the GetWindowPlacement
and SetWindowPlacement functions.
Passing workspace coordinates to
functions which expect screen
coordinates (such as SetWindowPos)
will result in the window appearing in
the wrong location. For example, if
the taskbar is at the top of the
screen, saving window coordinates
using GetWindowPlacement and restoring
them using SetWindowPos causes the
window to appear to "creep" up the
screen.
Or, the simpler solution that I've no doubt used before is just to check if the window is minimized before saving the state, and if it is, skip saving any state information.
As far as explaining why a window changes its size when it gets minimized, Raymond Chen's blog entry (and the linked entry as well) on the subject is mandatory reading. They don't really change to their taskbar button's size, but rather to a pre-defined size of 160x31. He explains that you can see this by minimizing a MDI child window into its parent—that's really its size.

Handle WM_SIZE message. If wParam is not SIZE_MAXIMIZED or SIZE_MINIMIZED, keep window size and position in some varibles. Use these variables when window is closed.

Related

Fullscreen borderless window with 'owned' window on-top

I have two OpenGL windows: a main one and a smaller one that is set to be 'owned' by the main one (hWndParent is set in CreateWindowEx, but the WS_CHILD style is not set).
If I then convert my main window to be borderless and the same size as my desktop it will jump in front of the smaller window even though it's owned and that should not be possible (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms632599%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#owned_windows). This is true even if the smaller window is set to be always-on-top.
On it's own this isn't terrible, but the core issue is that I can still click-through my main window on where the smaller window is, and the smaller window will pop infront. I can go between the two windows endlessly like this by clicking on the main window, then clicking-through the main window.
If I make the main window size 1 pixel less than the full desktop size, none of these issues occur and the windows behave is as expected.
I can't find any documentation that describes this behavior. It is a feature to keep windows from going infront of content (such as a video playing back) that isn't documented, or am I just missing it?
I'll mention I'm not using layered or transparent window here, so I don't think click-through should even be possible?
Thanks
What you experience may very well be a OpenGL implementation bug that's triggered by the heuristic in which the driver switched between "windowed" and "fullscreen" rendering: You see, for OpenGL there's no special "exclusive fullscreen mode" as Direct3D has. Instead a borderless window covering the whole screen, which is not overlapped by foreign windows may trigger a "fullscreen" detection, which may the OpenGL implementation in question make switch to another code path (namely one, where all pixel ownership tests are disabled and the framebuffer flips go directly to the display scanout, bypassing the windowing compositor.
What you do there is so uncommon, that it likely may have slipped through all conformance tests. Having child windows to a OpenGL window is uncommon in the first place and them being floating is even rarer.
If you've got a minimal example showcase, you should probably report it as a bug to the driver vendor. In the meantime I propose a workaround: Make your OpenGL window a child-window to your top level window (will of course require resizing in the toplevel WM_SIZE) and make your floating window another child to the toplevel; the z-order between childs in a parent window is respected and kept. Being a child to a toplevel window should inhibit most heuristics and OpenGL drivers should not loop at the border and size of OpenGL parent windows.

How to stop OpenGL from pausing when the window is out of focus or resizing?

I'm trying to prevent my rendering from stopping when my window is out of focus or resizing. In addition to the resizing, if I resize my window smaller, then bigger again anything that wasn't visible when it was smaller is now black. Is there any way to fix this?
There are really two distinct things going on here. The moving/resizing problem is caused by the windows DefWindowProc function which applications use to handle messages that aren't explicitly handled by the application itself. In the case of moving or resizing, it blocks, creating a new message queue to handle most messages, but there are a few that it will still dispatch to the application's main event queue, like WM_TIMER. You can find lots more information in this answer.
The second issue is that your program only "owns" the pixels inside your window, and only those that are not covered up by other windows. When you make the window smaller, the pixels at the edge need to be overwritten to show the window border or whatever's behind the window. When the window is made bigger, some drivers automatically set the newly acquired pixels to black, while others leave them at whatever they were before (usually part of the window border). The OS doesn't remember if those pixels had some specific color the last time the window was that size, because most of the time the program doesn't care. Instead, windows sends a WM_PAINT message to indicate that the application should redraw the window. Your program should either directly handle this, or use a library like GLFW that abstracts it. In addition, you need to handle resize events by calling glViewport with the new size of the window.

How to get a print screen of the desktop without any windows or the taskbar?

My application is a Windows Forms one.
I tried using the windows wallpaper, but this depends on the "Fill", "Stretch", "Fit" or "Tile" settings.
I just need the image as it is on the desktop, but including the part "under" the taskbar, because this part is visible in case of transparent taskbar.
Why I need this?
Because I have a tray application which slides from under the taskbar when opening. And I need to set a mask there, so it can't be seen sliding, until it reaches the top of the taskbar. Again, this is only a problem when the taskbar is transparent.
I am not sure if I understood your question correctly. But to me, it seems that you need the image that has created wallpaper. If it seems easier, take a look at registry entries at following location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
This will give you the path, size, tile/no tile etc. information for the wallpaper.
There is a Win32 function called PaintDesktop you could try but unless I'm misunderstanding things you should be able to just adjust the height of your window so it is never really behind the taskbar...
Why I need this? Because I have a tray application which slides from under the taskbar when opening. And I need to set a mask there, so it can't be seen sliding, until it reaches the top of the taskbar. Again, this is only a problem when the taskbar is transparent.
The problem here is that you're starting the slide up from the bottom of the entire screen, rather than starting from the bottom of the screen's working area (i.e., the top of the taskbar). That's why you're seeing the pop-up window slide up behind a transparent taskbar.
Luckily, the solution is much simpler than obtaining the desktop background and/or doing any type of masking. It's also much faster, and it's always good that your eye candy isn't unnecessarily taxing the user's computer.
All you need to do is determine the coordinates of the screen's working area, which is defined by Windows as the area that can be used by applications, not including the taskbar and other side bars. You can obtain this information easily in WinForms by querying the Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea property. This will return a Rectangle that corresponds to the primary screen's working area. Since you know that the taskbar is always displayed on the primary screen, this is exactly what you want.
Once you have the coordinates of the primary screen's working area, start your pop-up window's slide from the bottom of that.*
This is a good lesson of why you should always include an explanation of why you want to accomplish something. There's often an even better way that you haven't thought of.
*Of course, I'm ignoring the fact that a user might not have their taskbar positioned at the bottom of the screen. You can put it on either side or even on top. It sounds to me like you haven't considered this in your question, either. If this is an app that you're writing only for yourself or for a controlled environment where you can be sure that no one has their taskbar in non-default positions, that might be OK. But if you're writing software to distribute to a wider audience, you will need to take this into account. The rcWork coordinates will be correct, regardless of where the taskbar is positioned, of course, but you will need to know whether to start the pop-up window's slide from the bottom, the left side, the right side, or the top.

Managing window size with respect to the taskbar

How can I resize my application's window when the taskbar's size has changed?
For example, when the taskbar has been reduced in size my window should increase in size to fill up the hole that was created. My window should never overlap the taskbar.
I was able to create the window in the correct place by calling CreateWindowEx with a position derived from calling SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETWORKAREA, 0, &rectWorkArea, 0);
Now, when I increase the taskbar's size my window's size decreases automatically
without any code. But when I "go back", my window remains in its current position. How can I fix this?
Not judging if it is good or wrong idea (as standard applications just don't do it), I think it can be tracked by handling WM_SETTINGCHANGE in any top-level window.

Auto-Hide taskbar not appearing when my application is maximized

My application draws all its own window borders and decorations. It works fine with Windows taskbars that are set to auto-hide, except when my application window is maximized. The taskbar won't "roll up". It will behave normally if I have the application not maximized, even when sized all the way to the bottom of the screen. It even works normally if I just resize the window to take up the entire display (as though it was maximized).
I found the problem. My application was handling the WM_GETMINMAXINFO message, and was overriding the values in the parameter MINMAXINFO record. The values that were in the record were inflated by 7 (border width) the screen pixel resolution. That makes sense in that when maximized, it pushes the borders of the window beyond the visible part of the screen. It also set the ptMaxPosition (point that the window origin is set to when maximized) to -7, -7. My application was setting that to 0,0, and the max height and width to exactly the screen resolution size (not inflated). Not sure why this was done; it was written by a predecessor. If I comment out that code and don't modify the MINMAXINFO structure, the Auto-hide works.
As to why, I'm not entirely sure. It's possible that the detection for popping up an "autohidden" taskbar is hooked into the mechanism for handling WM_MOUSEMOVE messages, and not for WM_NCMOUSEMOVE. With my application causing the maximize to park my border right on the bottom of the screen, I would have been generating WM_NCMOUSEMOVE events; with the MINMAXINFO left alone, I would have been generating WM_MOUSEMOVE.
This is dependant on whether 'Keep the taskbar on top of other windows' is checked on the taskbar properties. If it's checked then the taskbar will appear.
But don't be tempted to programmatically alter this setting on an end users machine just to suit your needs, it's considered rude and bad practice. Your app should fit whatever environment it gets deployed to.

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