Igor Delovski Board

[delovski]

How are window manager handles determined in Windows NT?

"In Windows NT, the 32-bit HWND was broken into two parts. The bottom 16
bits acted like the window handle of Windows 95: It was an index into a table.
But whereas Windows 95 left the upper 16 bits zero for compatibility with 16-bit
programs, Windows NT used the top bits as a "uniquifier"."

[delovski]

RC: Don't just grab the foreground window and host UI on it

"When it called DialogBox to display the error message, it didn't pass
the setup program's main window as the hwndParent. Instead it passed
GetForegroundWindow(). They chose the wrong owner for modal UI."

[delovski]

cboard - Changing windows Styles on the Fly

"The problem is that when I change the style, the window does not accept
any type of move or resize input from the user. When I hover my mouse over
the border, the cursor should change to a resize cursor, rather it doesn't and
just passes the input of a click into my Game."

[Ike]

RC: Which windows appear in the Alt+Tab list?

"For each visible window, walk up its owner chain until you find the root
owner. Then walk back down the visible last active popup chain until you
find a visible window. If you're back to where you're started, then put the
window in the Alt+Tab list."

[delovski]

RC: Use WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED to react to window state changes

"The documentation for the WM_SHOWWINDOW message points out that the
message is not sent under certain circumstances. But what if you want to
know when the window is shown, including in the cases where you don't get
WM_SHOWWINDOW?"

[Ike]

RC: Use WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING to intercept window state changes

"The WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING message is sent early in the window state
changing process, unlike WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED, which tells you about
what already happened."

[Ike]

RC: How do I flash my window caption and taskbar button manually?

"For illustration purposes, I'll demonstrate flashing the caption manually. This
is generally speaking not recommended, but since you asked, I'll show you
how. And then promise you won't do it."

[delovski]

RC: Foreground activation permission is like love: You can't steal it, it
has to be given to you

"In all cases, note that you can't give away something that's not yours. If you
don't have permission to take foreground, then calling AllowSetForegroundWindow
(or one of its moral equivalents) will have no effect: You just told the window
manager, 'It's okay; he's with me,' and the window manager replied, 'Who the
hell are you?'"

[XNote]

RC: The dangers of destroying a window while it is processing a sent
message

"Destroying the active window means that the window manager has to find a
new active window. You're triggering an activation change while another act-
ivation change is in progress; no wonder things get all messed up."

[delovski]

cboard - How to find open windows ?

"I am currently using EnumWindows() but it lists every window (including
child windows) and this is not what I want to do. I want to find all windows
that are on the taskbar (or alt-tab or whatever)"

[delovski]

RC - A window can have a parent or an owner but not both

"A window can be created as a child window (WS_CHILD set) or a top-level
window (WS_CHILD not set). A child window has a parent, which you specify
when you call CreateWindowEx, and which you can change by calling Set-
Parent. A top-level window, on the other hand, has no parent. Its parent is
NULL."

[Ike]

RC - Sending a window a WM_DESTROY message is like prank
calling somebody pretending to be the police

"A customer was trying to track down a memory leak in their program.
Their leak tracking tool produced the stacks which allocated memory that
was never freed, and they all seemed to come from uxtheme.dll, which
is a DLL that comes with Windows. The customer naturally contacted
Microsoft to report what appeared to be a memory leak in Windows."