In my custom actions, I've used MessageBox.Show() to show a dialog whether needed. For ex: during database installation, I'd like to show a message to user if any error. But the message box is not set as a child of Wix window by default, thus the end-user can leave the message box and touch the Back, Next button ...
Is there any way to set the message box as a child of the main Wix installer window?
Thanks in advance,
There are bad ways and good ways. The bad ways involve FindWindow calls so you can parent appropriately. The good ways involve calls to MsiProcessMessage, Session.Message, or whatever wrapper is available. However if this custom action is being invoked from a DoAction ControlEvent, the latter will not work.
Related
I have read that I should only use PostMessage() to tell the UI thread to access the UI controls.
There is no problem in following this approach if I am for example setting the text of an "EDIT" control. However, what if I want to get the text of an "EDIT" control, if I send a message to the UI thread using PostMessage(), then PostMessage() will return immediately before the text is set into the buffer, so how should I solve this problem?
You cannot use PostMessage for this purpose for the reasons that you identify. WM_GETTEXT is a synchronous message. What you should do is:
If the window is in your process, then you should use GetWindowText.
If the window is in a different process, then you should call SendMessageTimeout.
Why SendMessageTimeout rather than SendMessage? Well, if the other process has hung and is not responding, then using SendMessage would never return.
There is more discussion of this topic here: The secret life of GetWindowText.
I'm working in a legacy application using MFC.
We have a mechanism to enable/disable controls depending on some business logic.
This mechanism is implemented in the CView-derived class. The way it works is all the views in the application derived from a common CView-derived class (CBaseView) and on the PreTranslateMessage all controls of the view are enabled/disabled.
This worked fine so far because all controls send at least WM_PAINT message when they need to be painted. So the system worked without the user having to move the mouse or anything. I recently added some drawing features and I had to use WS_EX_COMPOSITE to get ride of some flickering. With this flag activated my CView-derived class is not getting any called to PreTranslateMessage when creating the view....so the controls are not disabled until the user moves the mouse over the control.
I understand there is no way to send WM_PAINT using WS_EX_COMPOSITE but is there other message I can use to get the same behaviour???
Edited:
I am currently using the OnIdle approach but it has a big drawback, the windows doesn't become idle until after drawing all the controls...so when you enter the screen al controls are enabled and inmediately they are disabled...this makes a quite ugly effect!
More solutions???
Thanks in advance...
The logical place to enable/disable controls would be CView::OnUpdate, it is called by the framework after the view's document has been modified and from OnInitialUpdate(); you can also call this function if there is some change that would trigger re-evaluation of your business logic.
EDIT
After reading the question a bit more closely, what you could also do is to post a private message at the end of OnInitialUpdate and "catch" it in your PreTranslateMessage:
PostMessage(WM_APP, 0, 0);
Calling InvalidateRect followed by UpdateWindow against the window in question will mark the entire client area as dirty and force an immediate repaint. Remember that WM_PAINT is not really a message, in the queue in the usual sense, it is pushed out after all other messages have been processed for that window, which would include any invalidations of the area being drawn. No message is generated at all if there are no invalid segments of the active window display.
I am working with Dialog based application.
My Question is that, I want to show Waiting dialog, until some database operation carried out.
i Used Derived class from CWinThread, but problem is that, when this thread close, the background (Main application dialog) remains at deactivated means( it hide behind another window).
i am thinking that, this is happening because of WaitDialog used CWinThread class.
The problem is not unique to a dialog based application. Creating windows of any kind in more than one thread is difficult and not recommended. In your case it sounds like your wait dialog is modal, while its parent dialog is in another thread. That is even worse and can lead to deadlocks between threads.
The reliable solution is to put the wait dialog (and all other GUI) in the main thread, and the lengthy database processing in a secondary thread.
Another alternative would be to use a Modeless Dialogbox which can also optionally show the status and call the DestroyWindow function when the database operation is completed -- you may need to disable some operations of the main window while the Modeless Dialogbox is visible, though.
From the comments on my previous answer, it looks like that alternative is not viable in this situation.
Maybe a better way would be to create a normal modal "wait" dialog box, start the background thread in the dialog's InitDialog, periodically check the status of the thread using a timer and end the dialog when the thread completes?
I have a bunch of control objects (TextBoxes, to be precise) that get injected into my code using the #FXML annotation during the FXML load.
I would like to save the states of these controls, specifically the text values, when the user closes the Scene by clicking the close box on the title bar.
However, when I trap the CloseRequest event in an OnCloseRequest handler I find that the values of the control variables are null (the original injection works, so this is something that happens in between the loading of the FXML and the calling of OnCloseRequest).
Can anyone explain this behavior and/or suggest how I can get the functionality that I want?
TIA
onCloseRequest is
Called when there is an external request to close this Window. ...
(from Javadoc). One of the meanings of "external request" is when you close the window through OS native window close button. The closeRequest event is not triggered through the programmatic stage.close() or stage.hide() calls. So consider to handle onHiding or onHidden events.
Otherwise post your OnCloseRequest handler code.
Is there a way to make a TaskDialog always on top (ie, system modal)?
I've checked the TaskDialogConfig structure (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787473(VS.85).aspx), but I'm not having any luck.
Anyone know how to do it or if it's possible?
Don't know if this is helpful. But you can make the TaskDialog application modal if you supply a window handle to the hwndParent member of the configuration.
Yes, there is a way. You need to use TaskDialogIndirect function and set up a callback. In the callback you get window handle to the newly created TaskDialog. With that you can call SetWindowPos with necessary parameters.