We have a VB6 application that uses a non-visible window (form) for DDE communication.
We have some clients reporting that occasionally they can see this window on their desktop.
I did a scan through the code for any visible = true or show's on the form in question, but nothing.
This about all we do with it:
Load frmDDELink
frmDDELink.stuff = stuff
We don't actually explicitly display (or explicitly not display it either).
What could cause a hidden window to be displayed on a user's desktop such that it is visible?
Try and set the location of the form to off-screen.
frmDDELink.ClientLeft = -100
frmDDELink.ClientTop = -100
A misbehaving app on the client's machine could do that. FindWindow() is a notoriously inaccurate API function. On top of that, all VB6 windows have the same class name. Thunder something, iirc. It might be finding your window instead of the one intended, making the wrong window visible.
I like Black Frog's simple hint to set the location off-screen, and nobugz's possible explanation. I would also suggest handling the Form_Activate event and setting the form invisible again.
Private Sub Form_Activate()
'Log something for debugging purposes?'
Me.Visible = False
End Sub
try to set the border into none, or me.visible = false, and set the property not to display in the task bar.
Related
I'm working on a applescript to update the content of a document in Microsoft Word. The updating process is quite long (might take more than 5s). So I want to prevent users to change anything during the updating. Do you know whether Microsoft or Applescript a function like that?
In Windows, I can just display a User Form (which is a dialog telling that "we are updating... ") and close that form when it's done. However, I don't know whether I can do the same in Mac (with Applescript alone).
When you say "applescript", I don't know if you mean "plain" applescript or the AppleScriptObjC version. If you mean the latter, then I know ways to do it.
One way I've used during slow processes is to put an overlay view over the whole content view of the window. I make it translucent white to partially obscure the window, and put some kind of message (and maybe a progress indicator) on it. You can just use an NSBox (of the custom type) in IB to make this, and then make a subclass of NSBox to color the view and override mouseDown:. MouseDown:, doesn't need to have any code in it, just by overriding it, you capture any key and mouse events so they don't accumulate on the event queue, and get used by the view below after your overlay goes away. Here's code I've used:
script Overlay
property parent : class "NSBox"
on awakeFromNib()
set overlayColor to current application's NSColor's colorWithCalibratedWhite_alpha_(1,.8)
setFillColor_(overlayColor)
end
on mouseDown_(theEvent)
--log "mouseDown"
end
end script
I have this view as the top most view in the view hierarchy, and set its hidden property to true until I want to show it.
Is there a method such that a user can click on the form itself, and in doing so remove focus from whatever object (textbox, combobox, etc) currently has it? Basically, can focus be uniformly removed from everything at once?
Setting the focus to the form itself does not work.
I thought about doing the old "hide a placeholder button behind another object" trick, but I'm really not a fan of that.
Thanks!
In VB6 a PictureBox can get focus, even if it does not contain any control.
In your case you can put a PictureBox with TabStop false, BorderStyle set to 0, TabIndex set to 0 behind every other control but not containing any focusable control and stretch it to ScaleWidth by ScaleHeight at run-time.
You have to put the labels and any windowless control in this background PictureBox too.
This way when the user clicks "on the form" the focus will "go away". With "no focus" Tab key will focus first control (the one with TabIndex set to 1).
When a form is active, something generally HAS to have focus. It sounds like you're just wanting to not "show" that a particular control has focus.
If that's the case, it's going to depend on the controls. Some have properties that control whether or not the specific control "indicates" its focus in some way.
But the built in Windows controls will always show their focus state unless you subclass them
Given this problem. I'd probably put a button on the form , then move it offscreen when the form loads. Make sure it's not a tab stop, but then when you want to hide focus, set focus specifically to the button, make sure the button is STILL in the tab order, even though it's not a tab stop, so the user can press tab while on the button and end up somewhere logical.
Don't have VB handy, but could you simply remove TabStop?
for x = 1 to me.Controls.count
me.Controls(x).TabStop = 0
next
I have a picturebox and a control on a form.
Private Sub cmdButton_Click
PictureBox.setFocus
Exit sub
End sub
The control doesn't change its appearance, nor does the picturebox.
Of course you'll need to add an If-Then clause if you want the control to respond normally sometimes.
I'm currently using the ShowCursor API call to hide a cursor for an application after a set period of inactivity. This works fine, except that the cursor is hidden over both the menus and status bar (which I don't want). I'm also using a Form_MouseMove to switch the cursor back on, but this doesn't work over the menus or status bar.
Is there a clever way to target hiding the cursor to just on the Form (supplying a hWnd for example, to some API call or other)?
I've tried this on my form:
With Me
.MouseIcon = LoadPicture("C:\Windows\Cursors\blank.cur")
.MousePointer = vbCustom
End With
having downloaded a blank.cur file off the internet.
The cursor disappears over the form, but is still visible over the menu bar.
Isn't there something like Form1.MousePointer = vbHourGlass property?
Yes, here.
I want to set a certain window, from an external app (for example textedit), to be front most.
I can successfully get a reference to the app itself using GetFrontProcess, and check whether it is front most. If it is not, I can use setFrontProcess to make it focussed.
I can then use the the accessibility API to examine all the windows under that application. I am checking that a certain window exists, and if so I compare it against the front most window of the application:
//get the front window of textEditApp and store it in 'currentFrontWindow'
AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue(textEditApp, kAXFocusedWindowAttribute, (CFTypeRef *)¤tFrontWindow);
If the window I am interested in is not frontmost, I need to set it so. I thought that I could use AXUIElement Set AttributeValue to do this but I am not getting any success. Below is how I have tried to do it.
//set the front window of textEditApp to be desiredFrontWindow
AXUIElementSetAttributeValue(textEditApp, kAXFocusedUIElementAttribute, desiredFrontWindow);
I have checked that the window exists, and the application is 'switched to' successfully. But why doesn't this line of code bring the specified window to the front?
Thanks.
But why doesn't this line of code bring the specified window to the front?
Because you tried to set a read-only attribute.
In order to make a window frontmost, you need to set the appropriate property of the window. The same goes for an application: To make an application frontmost, you need to set the appropriate property of the application.
The Cocoa/Mac OS X name for the frontmost window is “the main window”. (See, for example, NSApplication's and NSWindow's methods relating to that concept.) Accessibility uses the same name, so to make a single window frontmost, set the value of its kAXMainAttribute to kCFBooleanTrue.
The way to make the application frontmost is similar: Set the value of its kAXFrontmostAttribute to kCFBooleanTrue. You'll need to do both of these to both set the frontmost window of the application and make the application active.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to bring only a single window of an application frontmost and give it session focus.
I was able to accomplish this in an app I worked on by bringing the application to the front, then bringing a single window to the front.
First bringing the app to the front:
let currentPid = NSRunningApplication.currentApplication().processIdentifier
if let pid = (the pid of the app in question) where pid != currentPid {
NSRunningApplication(processIdentifier: pid)?.activateWithOptions(.ActivateIgnoringOtherApps)
}
Then sending the window to the front:
let window = (window AXUIElement)
AXUIElementSetAttributeValue(window, NSAccessibilityMainAttribute, true)
I recently discovered that, if you don't mind some Carbon, you can use SetFrontProcessWithOptions to bring a window to the front and give it focus if you pass kSetFrontProcessFrontWindowOnly as the second argument.
I'm running into a problem trying to anchor a textbox to a form on all 4 sides. I added a textbox to a form and set the Multiline property to True and the Anchor property to Left, Right, Up, and Down so that the textbox will expand and shrink with the form at run time. I also have a few other controls above and below the textbox.
The anchoring works correctly in Visual Studio 2005 (i.e. I can resize the form and have the controls expand and shrink as expected), but when I run the project, the bottom of the textbox is extended to the bottom of the form, behind the other controls that would normally appear beneath it. This problem occurs when the form loads, before any resizing is attempted. The anchoring of the textbox is correct for the top, left, and right sides; only the bottom is malfunctioning.
Has anybody heard of this and if so, were you able to find a solution?
Thanks!
UPDATE:
Here is some of the designer code as per Greg D's request (I am only including the stuff that had to do with the textbox itself, not the other controls):
Friend WithEvents txtRecommendationText1 As System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
<System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()> _
Private Sub InitializeComponent()
Me.txtRecommendationText1 = New System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
' ...snip...
'txtRecommendationText1
Me.txtRecommendationText1.Anchor = CType((((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Top Or System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Bottom) _
Or System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Left) _
Or System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Right), System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles)
Me.txtRecommendationText1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(4, 127)
Me.txtRecommendationText1.Multiline = True
Me.txtRecommendationText1.Name = "txtRecommendationText1"
Me.txtRecommendationText1.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(223, 149)
Me.txtRecommendationText1.TabIndex = 10
End Sub
ANOTHER UPDATE:
The textbox I originally posted about was not inherited from a baseclass form (although it was added to a custom User Control class; I probably should have mentioned that earlier), but I recently ran into the same problem on a totally unrelated set of controls that were inherited from a baseclass form. It's easy to blame these problems on possible bugs in the .NET framework, but it's really starting to look that way to me.
Is your Form localized? Check the resource files for an entry with Textbox.Size, delete is and reset the size.
Is your Form inherited and is the Textbox on the baseform? Try setting the Textbox's access modifier to Protected or Public.
Have you implemented custom resize logic? Turn it off and see if the problem is still there.
Have you entered a Textbox.MinimumSize/MaximumSize? Remove or change the value.
It might also be a combination of these things...
Does the form snap back to the expected layout when you resize it after it's been initialized weirdly? Also, have you set a Height or MinimumHeight/MaximumHeight property for the text box?
If possible, a few snippets from the designer code might be useful. :)
One possibility that I've run into in the past is DPI. If you're running/testing your code on a machine with a different DPI setting than the machine that you're developing on, you may observe some strange things.
The anchor functionality essentially establishes a fixed distance between the edge of a control and the edge of the control's parent. Is your textbox embedded within another control (e.g., a panel) that doesn't have its anchors properly set? Right clicking on the text box in the designer should pop up a menu that lets you select any controls that exist underneath it, also.
Does your program include any custom resize logic, or does it modify the size of the textbox programmatically outside of designer-generated code? That might also result in weird behavior. I've assumed maintenance for a number of pieces of software at my organization where the original developers spent a great deal of time implementing (buggy) resize logic that I had to tear out so that I could just let the designer-generated code do the work for me.
The textbox I originally posted about was not inherited from a baseclass form (although it was added to a custom User Control class; I probably should have mentioned that earlier), but I recently ran into the same problem on a totally unrelated set of controls that were inherited from a baseclass form. It's easy to blame these problems on possible bugs in the .NET framework, but it's really starting to look that way to me.
It's very likely because of the 'AutoScaleMode' property being set in InitializeComponent(). Try setting it to 'None' and see if that fixes it. I've had these problem a couple of times now.