How to disable the little touch-keyboard on Windows edit controls - windows

In a windows version with tablet support, a small keyboard icon appears when an edit control gets focus. If you touch it the touch keyboard pops up.
Is there a way to disable this? It's rather inconvenient if you have your own touch keyboard.
I want to disable it for certain edit controls in code, ie. I'm not looking for a Windows setting.
Giel

Well, I guess a late answer is better than no answer, so here it comes:
You can disable the Windows onscreen-keyboard for your application.
To do so, start Regedit and navigate to the Key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TabletTIP\DisableInPlace]. There you create a new String Value, set its name to the full application Path (e.g. "C:\Progam Files\My App\MyApp.exe") and set its value to "1".
Edit: Recently I had to rethink my solution... By setting the Registry value, you disable the onscreen-keyboard for the whole application. But should you need a keyboard for some seldom used function of your program and just happend to forget including an onscreen-keyboard, you have to control the Windows TextInputPanel via SDK / API. See this link: Disabling the Input Panel Programmatically.
Use the PenInputPanel for handwriting and the TextInputPanel for an onscreen-keyboard.
For all those Delphi programmers out there: import the Type Library "Microsoft PenInputPanel" and FIX A BUG in the imported *_TLB.pas: change the parameter type of the two methods of IPenInputPanel:
function Get_AttachedEditWindow: SYSINT; safecall;
procedure Set_AttachedEditWindow(AttachedEditWindow: SYSINT); safecall;

Disable the "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service"

Related

How does the language bar (input language) impact keyboard hooks?

I ran into a reproducible bug which doesn't really make sense to me. Hopefully someone knows more about the internals of keyboard input under Windows (I'm using Windows 7) and can point me in the right direction on how to solve it. As it stands now I don't really know where I should start to look.
My application creates a global keyboard hook, using the MouseKeyboardActivityMonitor library. This was working fine for me, but I quickly received bug reports from people using different keyboard input languages. When they write letters with accents, e.g. ë and ê, they show up as ¨¨e and ^^e respectively. This bug is also reported on the library's website, but hasn't been resolved yet.
To try to reproduce the bug I set up an alternate input language 'Dutch (Belgium)' next to my existing 'English (United States)'. After some toying around I discovered the following:
The bug doesn't occurs when the application which installs the hook has focus, and language is set to 'English (United States)'. Writing in any other application (e.g. notepad) and using 'Dutch (Belgium)' to write the special characters work. The bug does occur when the application which installs the hook has focus, and language is set to 'Dutch (Belgium)'.
I am looking for any clue as how the two are related. Perhaps I need to introduce some extra checks in the keyboard hook library? The source code of the keyboard hook is available on line.
It seems that the input language is not updated in your application. Looking at the source code of the library that you are using, it seems that they use this call to get the correct keyboard layout:
internal static extern uint GetKeyboardLayout( int dwLayout );
The documentation of this method however emphasises:
The input locale identifier is a broader concept than a keyboard
layout, since it can also encompass a speech-to-text converter, an
Input Method Editor (IME), or any other form of input. Since the
keyboard layout can be dynamically changed, applications that cache
information about the current keyboard layout should process the
WM_INPUTLANGCHANGE message to be informed of changes in the input
language.
However, based on a quick glance at the code, the library does not seem to respond to this WM_INPUTLANGCHANGE message, which might cause this behaviour
Also, here is a useful link to an explanation how the Keyboard is handled by Windows

Allow selection in Explorer-style list view to start in the first column

In Windows 7's Windows Explorer list view (what allegedly is not list view at all) in the Details view, you can start selection marquee in the first (Name) column. You just need to start outside the actual name.
The same is true for default-style list view control in Details view.
But if you set the list view control to the Explorer style (using the SetWindowTheme), what should mimic the Windows Explorer, this does not work anymore. You can start selection in the second and later columns only.
SetWindowTheme(listView1.Handle, "explorer", null);
Is there any way to make list view mimic the Explorer selection style?
I suppose there's no settings to enable such behavior and this would have to be coded. Like handling the mouse down and triggering selection. But I have no idea how to do that.
Thanks.
Ntb, I'm using C++Builder, but this should be purely Win32 issue. I've tested this with WinForms too (hence the C# sample above).
Is there any way to make list view it mimic the Explorer selection style?
No, SysListView32 in explorer theme does not behave that way. The control used by the modern Explorer is actually DirectUIHwnd. And you are not able to use one of them.
The only way to get the behaviour of DirectUIHwnd is to code it yourself. I expect that's possible to do but I'd also expect it to be very difficult to achieve.
Actually there is a way to mimic Explorer selection behavior. It requires a lot of additional declarative work, but it is possible.
You need to get undocumented IListView interface via undocumented LVM_QUERYINTERFACE message (note that interface declaration and GUIDs are different for Windows Vista and Windows 7+). Details about constants and declarations can be found here:
IListView at Geoff Chappell - Software Analyst or
Undocumented List View Features at Code Project.
After acquiring the interface all you need is simply a call to SetSelectionFlags(1, 1) method. Voila you are done.

How to write a new Alt+Tab task switcher for Windows?

I am told, that the program that handles the ALT+TAB input is called task switcher. But I am not happy with the task switcher that is provided from stock.
Could anyone give me a push to the right direction so I get an idea how I could write one on my own and replace the old with the new one?
It's not that I have no programming experiance, I just don't know where to begin on this special one. :D
Thank you!
There are three essential ingredients for writing a replacement switcher in Windows (these were tested under Windows 7):
Capture Alt+Tab: For this I would use SetWindowsHookEx and a low-level keyboard hook (WH_KEYBOARD_LL).
Enumerate the windows you could switch between: Two options for this are EnumWindows or the UI Automation Framework (managed code can use System.Windows.Automation).
Perform the switching: You can use SwitchToThisWindow or SetForegroundWindow, but in either case you will need to set uiAccess=true in your manifest. This will additionally require you to sign your executable and install it in Program Files. You do not need to call AttachThreadInput or perform other such shenanigans.
For a more thorough discussion, see this blog post.
We have answered your question in this link:
How to focus on last activated program?
By using this code instead of that one you can have the list of open windows,
string name = GetWindowTextRaw((IntPtr)hwnd);
if (name.Length > 0)
{
windowArray.Add(hwnd);
}
Now you can use the following code to switch between windows:
SetForegroundWindow((IntPtr)windowArray.sth);

Firefox browser disable safe mode

I am using Windows 7 and I've been playing with the Firefox browser for a while.
I want to create a kiosk app using it, I installed a plugin for that, but the problem is that when I start the Firefox app, if I press Shift, it enters safe mode.
I read some guides on Google that tell me to edit chrome/browser.jar but I have no such file in my Firefox folder.
I need some help for disabling the feature that lets me enter safe mode by pressing Shift.
You cannot really disable safe mode by editing text files, the handling of the Shift key is inside compiled code. You can however disable the dialog that pops up by removing this code from components/nsBrowserGlue.js:
// check if we're in safe mode
if (Services.appinfo.inSafeMode) {
Services.ww.openWindow(null, "chrome://browser/content/safeMode.xul",
"_blank", "chrome,centerscreen,modal,resizable=no", null);
}
You can also leave extensions enabled in safe mode. For that you will have to also edit modules/XPIProvider.jsm and remove all occurrences of code like:
if (Services.appinfo.inSafeMode)
return false;
Both files can be found inside the onmi.ja archive in the Firefox directory.
That said, the proper solution to this problem would be running your own application on top of XULRunner which would allow you to design your own user interface for kiosk mode. Sadly, Open Kiosk (which is probably what you are using) is ancient and predates XULRunner.
I managed to disable Firefox session restore and safe mode tweaking these two preferences:
browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash => false
toolkit.startup.max_resumed_crashes => -1

how can i imitate zhider (hides any windows app)

how are they doing the hides ? http://www.zinious.com/products/ZHider/
like it can hide any window programs from showing up in taskbar and system tray.
how can i do this programmatically in vb6, .net , c++ ?
are there other similiar tools to zhider ? open source ?
thanks.
Most likely they are using PInvokes, you can check out a full reference on this site.
Example:
You can use ShowWindow to hide a
window, even if your app didn't create
it! Simply call ShowWindow(hWnd, 0);
If you just need this done once for your own personal use, check out AutoHotKey, it has a WinHide command. http://www.autohotkey.com/. If you need to implement this in your app, check out the source code for AutoHotKey.

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