Re: Capture windows area

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From: Mike D Sutton (EDais_at_mvps.org)
Date: 01/03/05

  • Next message: Peter Gast: "Re: Capture windows area" 
    Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 10:59:40 -0000

    > I want for a small graph-app. a feature which enables capturing a visible
    > area of the desktop. The code works almost fine when I move a rectangle with
    > the mouse the area inside this rectangle is captured. The problem is, that
    > in some cases some object get the focus and change their colors (for ex. if
    > you make a rectangle were an icon of the desktop is inside, or inside the IE
    > pictures can get focused and changes). How can I avoid that this occurs?
    > How can I draw visible rectangle to give the user a feedback of the current
    > area?

    A common technique is to make a screen capture of the entire desktop and display it on a full-screen borderless form, this way the
    user still sees what the desktop contains but effectively has a 'freeze-frame' while they're making their selection (which of course
    won't change when the mouse hovers over it.) Once the selection has been made then hide the full-screen window and resume capture
    of the desktop area as you would.
    If you want to stop the user from moving the mouse over the active area during the capture then you'd probably need to 'clip' the
    mouse cursor as in this post:
    http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=Oj5dEKMFDHA.2824%40TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl
    You may want to add an automatic unlock on a timeout though in case your window lost focus and the user didn't know about Alt+Tab to
    switch it back.
    Hope this helps,

        Mike

     - Microsoft Visual Basic MVP -
    E-Mail: EDais@mvps.org
    WWW: http://EDais.mvps.org/

  • Next message: Peter Gast: "Re: Capture windows area"

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