Little test

[jj2007]

then slowly move it back on, are the corners still round ?

Hi Edgar,

No, they come back squared. Had not seen that before, sorry.

[dedndave]

it appears that part of the move problem is fixed, Edgar
i still get the remnants
when i open the program, it is against my desktop as a background
to see the remnants, i move it over a white area
it seems to drag desktop content with it   :bg



in this case, it opened over firefox with the forum showing - lol
that is the lower part of the right hand side

[donkey]

Hi Dave,

The side stuff I hope is solved, I just wasn't going to attach the solution until I figure out the corners. I am certain that corner issue is a problem with erasing the background, there are many many places at MSDN that indicate that when using a NULL brush I have to erase the background myself but I can't seem to get how to do it so it stays transparent. Its frustrating because I think I have gone through all of the standard ROPs and am now using the non-standard ones.

Here's the solution (I hope) to the edge issue, still working on the corner problem...

[hutch--]

Edgar,

There are still repaint issues with the last one on XP SP3. Fails the slow drag test from off the screen, also has problems with dragging another window over it in that the corners appear as a black reverse radius.

Overlap it with another window them click back onto part of it and the overlapped part repaints correctly.

[donkey]

Hi Steve,

Yeah, there is a fundamental difference in the way XP handles background erasing that I can't seem to get a handle on, the edge issue I hope is fixed but the rounded corners are giving me fits. I could go the alpha blend route but that's normally a bigger can of worms and this way works so nicely in Vista and Win7 where apparently the problem is fixed. The problem appears to be that the window has a NULL brush so when Windows paints it it will use part of the desktop or object behind it, when its moved it should update the background but doesn't. I think that I will have to capture the desktop and paint the appropriate portion of it into the after the gradient fill with an inverted region. An incredibly complex paint process just to take care of something that is the responsibility of the OS.

[dedndave]

that method is probably do-able, Edgar
but, i think it is much worse than you think
it wouldn't be too bad if it was just your window and the desktop
but, if you take into account the z-order of multiple windows - well - let's go back to an overlayed window - lol
keep in mind that the content of these other windows may change at any time
the dynamics of capturing would be terrible

[donkey]

well - let's go back to an overlayed window - lol

Well, at worst I can go back to the square window but I haven't given up yet, there has to be a way or I'll just have to use alpha blending which is what I was trying to avoid. The alpha blend API (what there is of it) seriously sucks and is so counter intuitive that I would rather spend a week trying to get it done my way.

BTW are the jaggies fixed on the sides and bottom of the window on your system ?

[dedndave]

yah - that part is fixed   :U
good luck with the corners   :P

[MichaelW]

Running the EXE from reply #10 under Windows 2000, the only problem I can see is what appears to be random garbage in the 1-pixel wide strips on the right and bottom edges of the window. I don't know if it's the same problem, but this reminds me of a problem with the same symptoms that I had with FillRect, where I found the solution in the remarks section:

When filling the specified rectangle, FillRect does not include the rectangle's right and bottom sides. GDI fills a rectangle up to, but not including, the right column and bottom row, regardless of the current mapping mode.

Once I extended the right and bottom coordinates by one, the random garbage disappeared.

[drizz]

... the rounded corners are giving me fits.

Call SetWindowRgn (not in paint loop).

+ I would look into the border metrics for the current theme... GetSystemMetrics
+ UxTheme Api

[donkey]

Hi Drizz,

Thanks very much. I had figured it out shortly before going to bed last night but not yet modified the code. Stupid thing was I looked through some of my own example code and found the solution. Must be getting old or something because I found at least 20 apps that I wrote that used SetWindowRgn . I sometimes tend to over-complicate things even when the solution is right before my eyes.

At any rate, new test...

[hutch--]

Edgar,

This one works fine.

[donkey]

Thanks Steve,

Its freaking embarrassing to have missed that API. Changed the program to set the height of the new title bar using a constant (TITLEBARHEIGHT), this is where it really comes in handy if you want say a drop-down combo in the title bar. Also added an icon that resizes based on the height.

[Bill Cravener]

Now thats damn cool Edgar! I used CreateRoundRectRgn followed by SetWindowRgn in my little example PasteIt to round the corners here: http://www.quickersoft.com/examples/PasteIt.zip

I did this:

Code Select Expand


                 ;------------------------------------------
                 ; Round the corners of our window space
                 ;------------------------------------------
                 invoke CreateRoundRectRgn,0,0,600,300,30,30
                 invoke SetWindowRgn,hWin,eax,TRUE
                 ;------------------------------------------


[donkey]

Thanks Bill,

I have experimented a bit and found that using a straight dialog is pretty much the same, there is no need for the NULL brush or to change anything in the dialog class. Here's the result. There are a few advantages to using dialogs as opposed to windows since they are a bit easier to use and for the app I plan to use them in it won't take a rewrite.