I am docking another application's window inside of my WPF window using HwndHost. To do this, I have to set the WS_CHILD style attribute of the window I am docking and I lose the system menu of that window which is not acceptable. Using HwndHost there is no way around this since it will throw exceptions if that attribute is not set.
My question is;
Since my application doesn't use a system menu, is there any way to directly copy the system menu of the docked application to my app's window? The WinAPI menu functions I'm aware of would all require me to build up the menus from scratch and I don't know how I could hook those menu into the hosted application.
I'm not sure if it matters, but the two windows are within the same process. My application is a plugin of the application window I am docking.
Use GetSystemMenu to get an HMENU for the system menu for the given window. You should be able to cross-reference your own window's system menu with the docked application's system menu, copy across any that your own window doesn't have, and forward them on by handling and forwarding the relevant WM_SYSCOMMAND messages. Or maybe just copy the whole system menu and forward all of them on.
This will probably require a bit of trial and error to make it all work (especially if the docked application isn't expecting to be used this way...) but the above might help get things started.
Related
I have a problem that appears to be new to Windows 10.
I want to create a form that is visible to the user, but with no task bar icon and that does not appear in Alt+Tab.
This is perfectly doable if one is happy to sacrifice the normal styling of a window by following the accepted solutions here for either WPF or Windows Forms.
The general advice for both WPF and Windows Forms is:
Set ShowInTaskbar to false
Enable the ToolWindow styling (either through setting the border style in WinForms or the WindowStyle in WPF)
However, this has a new, practical problem in Windows 10 when using Virtual Desktops: the moment you do the above, the WPF or WinForms window will appear in every virtual desktop. See my example application with a red background:
This affects both the Task View switching screen and the actual desktop itself. No matter where you go, the form is there!
Is there any way to show a form - or even just a bitmap - on Windows without anything appearing in the taskbar, without anything appearing in Alt+Tab and without duplicating the window on every virtual desktop?
I have spent two days researching every possible option, trying every example online, reading MSDN documentation on window styles etc. but all resort to the same method, either through P/Invoke calls or directly, but either way the result is the same.
I'm not sure that's the right way to say it, but what I want is to for my wpf main window to have it's own bar that will behave like a taskbar, and any children windows that will be open from the main one will be placed in that bar in a similar way like the taskbar works in windows - a rectangle showing the window name for example, on click it opens you the window, if you click minimize it will minimize it to the bar, and with some option, to get it out of the main window and move it to the real windows taskbar, with another option for putting it back in. The problem is I don't know if this is even possible, and I don't know the name of such an element, so if anyone can give me any tips I'll be really thankful.
I worked on an application years ago (.NET 3.0: first WPF release!) that did exactly that. We ran into a lot of issues getting it to work, but we were pretty successful in the end. One thing we didn't support was moving it to the Windows taskbar.
The best option would be to set an attached property on each Window. This would register a Window with your custom taskbar, so if you wanted to move the Window out of your custom bar, you'd set the property to false. Setting the property to true would add it to the collection of application windows, as well as register event handlers to track the state of the Window.
One of the major pain points for us was getting the Window animations correct. If you're not running in XP, this probably less of an issue, as the animations in Vista (or is it 7?) and above aren't really showing where a Window is going on minimize. In the end, we had to do a lot of low level Win32 (p/Invoke) work for this.
Take a look at AvalonDock and WPF MDI:
http://avalondock.codeplex.com/
http://wpfmdi.codeplex.com/
I currently have LibVLC setup with a C# project and it uses a Panel to output the video stream. As WPF is better suited for some GUI options I want to implement, I have now switched my project over to it. However, I noticed that WPF Controls don't have handles like C# controls do.
I have found these...
http://wpfmediakit.codeplex.com/
http://videorendererelement.codeplex.com
However I am new to WPF and have no idea how to actually integrate them. What would be the best approach to output the video streams from LibVlC in WPF?
I managed to resolve this by using a WindowsFormsHost control and just use a Panel as I was doing previously in my Win Forms application. Still seems that using something else native to WPF would be preferable, but for now this is working fine.
I'm afraid that's not possible...
Since WPF controls are not Win32 controls behind the scenes (the MS specific HWND or the more general HANDLE), like most WinForms controls are, providing a HANDLE to libvlc for rendering is not possible or not easy.
See here
All WPF elements on the screen are ultimately backed by a HWND. When you create a WPF Window, WPF creates a top-level HWND, and uses an HwndSource to put the Window and its WPF content inside the HWND. The rest of your WPF content in the application shares that singular HWND. An exception is menus, combo box drop downs, and other pop-ups. These elements create their own top-level window, which is why a WPF menu can potentially go past the edge of the window HWND that contains it.
You could try to use a Window and attempt to get its Handle like this:
IntPtr windowHandle = new WindowInteropHelper(windowInstance).Handle
Then pass this handle to libvlc. Remember to obtain this handle no sooner than inside the Loaded event of the window, see here
But this will limit you to using a top level Window control, which doesn't seem to be what you want.
Is there a difference between window and user control? It seems to me that these two are exactly the same. So which one should I use and when?
(I tried googling this phrase and I couldn't find anything)
A Window is as the name suggests a window, it can be closed, minimized, resized etc. This should be quite intuitive.
A UserControl on the other hand is a composite component/module which can be placed inside other controls and is itself made up of controls (possibly even other UserControls), the main use for UserControls is reusability, encapsulation and loose coupling, some applications can be broken up into a set of UserControls of which each one provides a certain functionality.[citation needed]
We make user control if we want to reuse it. As name says User Control it means some control like grid,combo box like that.If i need same grid on 3-4 windows then i will prefer to make it as User Control.If it is not reusable i will define my grid in the required window.At last you paste your user control on some window.
Conclusion :- If you want to reuse the control then make it as a user control otherwise define it in required window.
A window is managed by the OS and is placed on the desktop.
A UserControl is managed by wpf and is placed in a Window or in another UserControl.
Applcations could be created by have a single Window and displaying lots of UserControls in that Window.
wpf window is a Win32 window, but user control is just something of wpf, not a Win32 window.
I presume you refer to the windows forms. Usually they are classified as user controls and custom controls - same stands for web forms as well. For more information you can refer to these links control vs user control in winforms and over view of user controls and custom contorls.
I need to provide a Windows Forms control to a native application (Visual Studio).
So I create a control and provide its handle.
Then, when I check the native window using Spy++, I see that my control is wrapped in additional 'control' with window class = "Static" and title "This is a static!". I have several problems with it:
Resize events sent to my control by a hosting window have to be re-sent to the "Static" so it also gets resized (otherwise my control get partially hidden within the static's size).
The static does not have WS_EX_CONTROLPARENT, which causes KB149501 to appear (in short, whole application hangs on lost focus).
If I apply WS_EX_CONTROLPARENT, listbox within the static stops redrawing.
I think I have been doing something wrong, but I am not sure what. Google does not help, since static is a C# keyword as well so it occurs quite often in WinForms results.
I mostly solved the redrawing problem using DoubleBuffered=True, so probably this is it.
I still think I am doing something wrong, but at least it works now.