Hey, folks!
Is there a way to lock a third-party application window to a particular location on the monitor display?
I have been experimenting with the Kernel object. And while it's very powerful (and can move a selected third-party window to a specific size and position), there doesn't seem to be any functionality to lock a selected third-party window so it cannot be moved.
Any ideas?
Thank you, as always!
Most sincerely,
RGBreality
There is not this functionality, because it Windows doesn't provide this ability. I'm pretty sure you can't even lock the position of your own window.
Could you maybe swallow its messages to do this?
If you can manage to inject a window handler into the other process, you could perhaps handle WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING and set the SWP_NOMOVE and SWP_NOSIZE (and maybe SWP_NOZORDER) bits in the flags.
That is of course far too low-level to do in MMF.
You definitely can do it in general. Still, hardly seems worth the effort just to stop somebody moving a window. Why would you want this anyway, RGBeality?
Hey, Jax!
Just for a bit of back story, I'm using MMF2 to develop a visual guide for my company's product. We are developing a "sandbox environment" where either a potential or existing customer can log on to a virtual computer and use a live-and-running installation of our product--with this guide running on the left-most quarter of the monitor real estate. This guide will step the user how to perform tasks using our product, and it will hopefully show what value our product has for them.
I have already developed one such guide using Adobe Captivate, and we've beta tested it internally and with a few select customers. However, we found that people were getting a little lost in places, and it would have been helpful to have little "pop-up" or tooltips that displayed above our product (outside the space the guide resides) to help them along if they needed it.
I had been using MMF2 to develop a pinball game (also for my marketing department), and as I worked with MMF2, I came to realize that this tool can emulate 90% of what Adobe Captivate could do natively (as far as screencast development), but it can do much more than what a Flash-based screencast could do (such as manipulate the computer environment in which an MMF2 application is running).
So, that's the back story...
Among some things we saw during beta testing (which we can observe in real time as the person "plays in the sand box") is that users would grab a third-party window (such as our application, Outlook, or IE), and drag it wider so that it would invade the monitor real estate which our guide was displayed. While I already have MMF2 to display "always on top," if a person drags another window across the guide space, they won't be able to see part of that application GUI.
So, while I have used the Kernel object in MMF2 to disable Close and Maximize buttons in these third-party applications we use in our sandbox environment, this doesn't prevent a person from manually making an application window wider (either intentionally or accidentally).
Side note: Believe it or not, you might be surprised just how low the "lowest common demoninator" can go in regards to not only how well they understand the Windows environment, but also how they play around in a space. We had a couple people in beta testing within the first five minutes of being logged on to the virtual computer extend an application window on top of the guide space (such to see if they could). Another person didn't understand what the "Windows Task bar" was (at least by name). So, MMF2 is wonderful for me to add tooltips (such as where an application is on the Windows Task bar).
So, that's the long-winded story of why I'd like to be able to prevent windows from being moved or expanded.
Any ideas on how I might be able to implement this?
Thank you for your interest and help, Jax!
Most sincerely,
RGBreality
The "No Thick Frame" option under the Application-Window tab is supposed to stop the window from being able to be re-sized.
Doesn't that affect only the MMF2 application window (and not other windows)?
RGBreality
Yeah, sorry. I mis-read the part about third party app.
You could try PowerPro. http://powerpro.webeddie.com/
Check out the Hook Windows events.
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