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Self-subclassing Controls/Forms - NO dependencies. Updated 09/10
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| Submitted on: |
6/1/2004 4:58:34 AM |
| By: |
Paul Caton
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| Level: |
Advanced |
| User Rating: |
By 70 Users |
| Compatibility: |
VB 5.0, VB 6.0 |
| Views: |
27932 |
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VB makes it easy to compile controls into an application if you have the source. It's much more convenient for users if the only file that needs to be added to the project is just the control’s ctl file. If the Control uses subclassing, then you're out of luck, or rather... you were. This submission includes the FIRST ever Control/Form that can subclass itself without ANY dependencies – modules, classes, type-libraries, references or components. The techniques used are based on my WinSubHook2 submission and thus incorporate IDE breakpoint and stop safety; it won’t crash the IDE. My main target audience here would be control authors, however, anyone who needs form subclassing may well find this to be an ideal solution. 06/02: Can now subclass multiple hWnd’s. 06/07: Byte array substituted in place of a string for the machine code buffer. 06/18: Hidden bug fixed, see comments. 06/19: Optimised to within an inch of its life. 06/20: Road to Damascus. 06/21 New sample added, see screenshot. 06/28 Final (I hope). 06/29 Oops fixed. 09/10 fixed bug in UserControl_Terminate, marked zSubclass_Proc hidden.
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Other 13 submission(s) by this author
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Other User Comments
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 6/1/2004 5:37:13 AM: Paul Caton
I've included a form sample that may be of interest to all VB coders, not just UserControl authors. Oh, and I just wanted to register another thanks to Fred.cpp for pushing me to make this happen.
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6/1/2004 6:32:42 AM: Mike
Very clever Paul.
But what happens when you want to sub class multiple components on the same form?
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6/1/2004 6:37:52 AM: Paul Caton
Then you'd need a regular subclasser. This is specifically designed for subclassing the UserControl itself.
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6/1/2004 6:53:51 AM: Paul Caton
On second thoughts, it's do-able, give me a couple of days and look for an update.
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6/1/2004 7:35:05 AM: Light Templer
Paul, as usual: GREAT!
Many thx for the many comments/hints and for the "try to VB5" I will check it out with it. Regards and (of course) °°°°°
LiTe
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6/1/2004 8:04:55 AM: Paul Caton
When I'm rich and famous, LiTe, I'm gonna donate you a copy of VB6 :-)
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6/1/2004 9:43:13 AM: Light Templer
Sorry Paul for this two missunderstandings:
* I HAVE a copy of VB6, but I don't want to use it!
* You ARE already famous in VB comunity!
(Ok, maybe not rich, but wait a little bit ;))) ...)
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6/1/2004 11:52:17 AM: Fred.cpp
Hi Paul. Is nice to see yous code here.
I've said Everything. I have your photo as my wallpaper:-)) , well, Actually is only your name, cuz I don't have a photo.
You can see I used your code in my isExplorerBar and I'll use It In all my controls. It's the most useful stuff in the year. Again So many thanks!
Kind Regards.
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6/1/2004 11:54:21 AM: Fred.cpp
Also Thanks for give the url of my control :)
I forgot to say, you got my 5 billions of globes (but PSC only let me give you 5 :( )
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6/1/2004 2:01:56 PM: selftaught
Excellent as always. Perhaps it's already been thought of, but for a usercontrol you could streamline the ASM allocation by only parsing the hex string in the initproperties event, and storing it as a byte array in the property bag. You could have the hex string as a private const in the InitProperties event, and then just read it back instead of parsing it over and over.
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6/1/2004 3:11:23 PM: skansoft
GREAT!! I am waiting for your update for multiple subclasser
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6/1/2004 3:41:17 PM: Anders Nissen
Wow, that is some really hardcore coding techniques. 5 of the small ones from me for sharing this masterpiece :)
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6/1/2004 6:28:39 PM: Paul Caton
Good idea, selftaught, I will look into it for the multi-version. Self-taught also.
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6/2/2004 6:54:55 AM: mugman21
Excellent idea; trying to view all your code but the power keeps flickering (da*n tornados last night + UPS battery is bad). :-(
Hope I can make use of this, needing to subclass a listview scroll event to reposition my progressbars....
Takes for sharing, 5 globes from me.
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6/2/2004 7:02:45 PM: Fred.cpp
Paul, I don't know what else can I ask for, you have changed the way I'll subclass controls and forms =).
congratulations.
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6/3/2004 5:45:47 AM: Paul Caton
Update - Now supports multiple hWnds. I will do another update in a few days when everything has been optimized to death. Thanks all for the votes and comments.
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6/3/2004 7:37:01 AM: Paul Caton
Update - I optimized some of the code and improved the samples. UserControl sample subclasses itself and the parent form. Form sample subclasses itself, a picture box and any number of other forms.
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6/3/2004 8:12:43 AM: Light Templer
Hi Paul,
it starts to be the allround
perfect solution ;))) !
After too small changes it works fine for VB5 in IDE and compiled, too (tested on Win NT4, SP6):
For bot (form/uc) do:
1 - Change in line
Private Enum TRACKMOUSEEVENT_FLAGS
to 'Public'
2 - In Private Function zAddrFunc() follow Pauls hint and comment out the line Debug.Assert zAddrFunc
Bingo!
One more time: Thx alot, Paul!
LiTe
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6/3/2004 8:16:30 AM: Paul Caton
Gotta ask, LiTe, why do you persist with VB5 if you have VB6? Did they break something you liked?
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6/4/2004 8:54:50 AM: ReadError
Wonderful
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6/4/2004 10:29:12 AM: Alexandru Ionescu
Bringing VB even closer to C. One day we will hack this languge to pieces, you and I ;). Great work...
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6/4/2004 11:02:12 AM: Paul Caton
Okay, this *should* be my final update. Managed to get rid of a subroutine, but more importantly (for me) an On Error Resume. The zAddrTbl function isn't needed because with this Subclasser you have to Start it before you can AddMsg. Improved some comments etc. I'm done. Enjoy!
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6/4/2004 11:55:42 AM: Paul Caton
Selftaught, I decided against because I didn't want to pollute the UserControl file-level variable space. Since I went to the multi-hwnd version the subclassing adds but a SINGLE file level variable, aSubData, I like this feature-ette, so I stuck with the way I was doing it before. However, no matter how many hWnds are subclassed, the code is only "constructed" the once.
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6/4/2004 4:02:38 PM: Chris Seelbach
Excellent. This also works if/when the U.C. has a transparent backgroung, rendering mouse move events on opaque regions only. This
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6/4/2004 4:11:15 PM: Chris Seelbach
Sorry Paul, I got excited and fell off my chair. "This opens the doors" for further development. Thank's for sharing this. ;)
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6/4/2004 9:22:12 PM: selftaught
I'm sure that since you decided against it, it wasn't the best route after all. Still, I think there's got to be a way to optimize the hex decoding... hmmm... my brain hurts. That's what I get for trying to think up a way to improve on your code! ;)
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6/4/2004 9:43:50 PM: selftaught
OK, being the obsessive optimizer that I am, I couldn't let it go! Here's all the ideas I could come up with: 1. you could preallocate the sBuf string and use mid$() in the for..next loop instead of concatenation, 2. you could use a long array and hardcode each pair of opcodes in the initialize event; such as when initizalizing a power2 array (doesn't VB need arrays of constants?!?), Or you could have another tiny asm snippet for string hex to opcode conversion (perhaps not practical, I don't know what it would take to emulate chrb$() and Val() hex conversion in asm, but it certainly would have numerous other uses) and inject it into a function like you did in your cShift class (which I am still using and I love by the way).
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6/5/2004 5:29:02 PM: Emiliano Scavuzzo
Great code Paul!
You're the best.
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6/5/2004 9:13:01 PM:
Excellent as usual Paul.
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6/7/2004 5:55:17 AM: Paul Caton
Minor optimization that saves a few mS on my PC. String code buffer substituted with a byte array.
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6/7/2004 9:00:29 PM: selftaught
Of course! all the benefits of the static array for the code buffer but no hardcoded opcodes. It seems so obvious now that I see it. Someday I'll have gotten up to speed. Maybe. ;)
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6/8/2004 1:35:43 AM: Dean Dusenbery
Paul, glad to see you switched to storing the asm code in byte arrays. The ChrB thing really threw me the first time I saw it! Great work!
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6/9/2004 12:53:13 PM: MArio Flores G
Great way to CODE!! amazing submission
Thanks for sharing ..maybe i will use this on my next submission..or maybe everybody must do!! :)
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6/10/2004 8:04:42 AM: Paul Caton
Well thanks for all the votes and comments, peeps. I really didn't expect to do this well. I rather thought my target audience was going to be limited to control authors alone. Anyway, I'll do another update soon, I've optimised it to death and am now in fact rolling some back.. It's really not worth the trouble of using SAFEARRAY array mapping just to save .1 of a millisecond in Subclass_Start - Cheers.
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6/11/2004 3:55:25 PM: Fred.cpp
I'm using this once again, hehe, )I'll rewrite all my controls! this is like reinvent usercontrols, forms, etc. I'm still excited the new posibilities in a single file control. Again thanks Paul.
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6/12/2004 6:22:19 AM: MH
Simply, Awesome. I always wanted to have the ability as C++ does to subclass controls easily without dependencies. Now, thanks to you we all do.
Peace
MH
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6/14/2004 5:58:30 PM: David J. Fritts
Paul, I see you patch in an ObjPtr(Me)! This is really unneeded, visual basic passes a hidden "this/me" parameter to all member functions.
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6/14/2004 5:59:55 PM: David J. Fritts
well, perhaps it is needed depending on wether or not you are calling the function.
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6/15/2004 3:14:19 AM: Paul Caton
David, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. The machine code thunk has to have a way of finding the callback routine. It does this thru the vtable which it knows via the ObjPtr(Me) patch. The minor discovery in this submission is that the first Public method in a form/usercontrol is located in the vtable at fixed locations. Hence no implements and no external dependencies.
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6/17/2004 8:47:58 AM: Noel H
Probably the most useful piece of code on PSC.
Congratulations.
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6/17/2004 5:25:30 PM: David J. Fritts
Paul, lol... I was pointing out to you that all member functions of visual basic objects are passed a hidden this/me parameter over the stack. But, since you are the one calling the callback-- yes you have to patch in the this/me pointer
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6/18/2004 4:39:03 PM: Paul Caton
MAJOR FIX - I hate accidental success... when the array of subclass data is redim-ed to add a new hWnd the code buffers get moved in memory. You might think that would cause an instant crash as the relative call addresses would then be wrong. But no, the window procedure carries on calling the old code with the correct offsets.. but that code is just waiting to be reclaimed by the garbage collector, which unfortunately doesn't do it's thing unless pushed. You can see this with the old form sample if you keep clicking the "Another form" button. The fix is to repatch the existing buffers and WndProc pointer each time a new hWnd is subclassed. Only glad I saw it before any of you lot did.
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6/18/2004 4:55:06 PM: Fred.cpp
Paul: wow, Nice update and your'e right you detected It before someone. I would love to do the same, but I get always lot of bug Reports hehe.
I would like to Vote again, maybe the more complex/poweful submission Even In PSC. This makes VB to go where Microsoft didn't even thought.
Best Regards.
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6/19/2004 4:44:10 PM: Paul Caton
06/19: Optimized to death. Sorry about all the endless updates folks, but just for the obsessive optimisers out there (you know who you are:) I wanted to give it everything I’ve got in that regard. I doubt if there's much more that can be wrought out of it. If you see something I’ve changed and are wondering why, don’t hesitate to ask. I added a Subclass_StopAll method that does what it says on the can.
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6/20/2004 10:27:20 AM: Paul Caton
LOL - Three updates in as many days; sorry. I just stumbled over the *elegant* (and umm, obvious) solution to the issue of the Redim moving the code buffers around in memory. Use allocated memory for the code buffers. No need to re-patch now, hurrah! Simplifies things significantly. I also cut-down in some other areas to allow double subclassing, ie subclassing the same window more than once.
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6/21/2004 4:31:25 AM: Light Templer
Perfect service, Paul ;) - thank you very much for the time you spent in.
LiTe
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6/21/2004 4:30:51 PM: tamogachi
please take a look at my post http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/showcode.asp?txtCodeId=54503&lngWId=1
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6/22/2004 10:11:53 AM: Vlad Vissoultchev
hi Paul,
do you know anything about buffer overflow protection XP SP2 is coming up with? i'm worried most of the "non-official" (non-MS) thunks will stop working unless specifically tweaked. namely, the memory pages the thunk occupies have to be flagged "for execution" -- this is a new flag they plan to introduce in SP2.
cheers,
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6/22/2004 10:33:28 AM: Paul Caton
Heya Vlad, nice to see you around.
Yes the NX flag as found on the A64 and Itanium... to be honest, dunno. Maybe somebody out there with an AMD64/SP2 could say. If it is a problem then I guess the solution is to use VirtualAlloc with execute permission.
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6/27/2004 4:21:52 PM: Luprix
Excellent idea and perfect implementation.
very useful and mainly to learn like vb work.
Best regards.
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6/28/2004 7:31:16 AM: Paul Caton
Update 06/28 a little safety improvement and some better comments. Hopefully done unless there's an issue with the NX flag on AMD64's running Windows XP Service Pack 2
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6/29/2004 4:10:49 AM: Paul Caton
Update 06/29 - Thanks to Dean for spotting an InIDE goof.
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6/29/2004 5:47:19 AM: Zhu JinYong
In sample 1,GDI increased by step 9 once adding a new form in XP.Is it normal?
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6/29/2004 8:16:41 AM: Paul Caton
I don't know, Zhu, to be honest with you. What tool are you using? You could comment out the Subclass_Start/Stop/AddMsg's and see if it makes any difference. I would be surprised if it did.
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6/29/2004 8:05:19 PM: Zhu JinYong
Sorry,it has nothing with your subclass.I have tested without subclass,but GDI keep increasing.
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6/30/2004 5:48:40 AM: Paul Caton
A big thanks to all those who voted and commented, thankyou. Sorry about all the updates :)
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7/7/2004 11:56:59 AM: Fred.cpp
Thanks for the continuous updates! For me, This is the code of the year!
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7/8/2004 12:51:27 AM: MArio Flores G
How do we call the Old WindowProc
how do catch values (hwnd, iMsg, wParam, lParam) to the old proc
Public Sub zSubclass_Proc(ByVal bBefore As Boolean, ByRef bHandled As Boolean, ByRef lReturn As Long, ByRef lng_hWnd As Long, ByRef uMsg As Long, ByRef wParam As Long, ByRef lParam As Long) this is the new patched proc , but can we still use the old proc?
can we callit without unsubclassing
SetWindowLong F.hwnd, GWL_WNDPROC,sc_aSubData(zIdx(lng_hWnd)).nAddrOrig
is it possible i hope you undestand my question
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7/8/2004 5:47:04 AM: Paul Caton
Mario,
Just add the api declaration for CallWindowProc
Get the array index for the hWnd and pass whatever values you want...
With sc_aSubData(zIdx(hWnd))
Call CallWindowProc(.nAddrOrig, hWnd, uMsg, wParam, lParam)
End With
I'll add it into an update if anyone else needs it.
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7/20/2004 8:54:10 AM: AlT
To quote Belushi in Animal House....Holy Sh-t! It is code like this that makes me ask myself why I bother.
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7/20/2004 4:46:37 PM: Paul Caton
Thanks AIT, it's comments like that, that
make me bother :)
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7/23/2004 11:45:01 AM: AlT
Would it be possible to use this technique inside a dll with a window created using CreateWindowEx? Since I have already managed to create memory exceptions both in the IDE and compiled when substituting an api window for the form hWnd in the examples, I am thinking some modification may be necessary? ;-)
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7/23/2004 12:17:48 PM: Paul Caton
AIT,
I could probably patch it up to handle a CreateWindowEx window, let me take a look. Question: One of the predefined classes, eg "STATIC" or would you need to register the window class as well?
In the meantime take a look here...
Particularly the Shadow/Fade ocx and the cWindow class, that may be all you need.
http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/showcode.asp?txtCodeId=51403&lngWI d=1
regards, Paul.
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7/23/2004 1:51:19 PM: AlT
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the quick reply. 'STATIC' is the type of window I will create in this instance. I am simply using a hidden window as a callback for some other API's I am calling. I am getting the memory exception when the window receives the MM_MIXM_CONTROL_CHANGE message from a mixer that I've opened. I also tried using a non-visible VBThunderMain as the callback window but got the page fault there too. However, I have to say that this technique works great in a usercontrol and is pretty slick. Although it will take some time for me to figure it all out, it is a big time saver and code reducer for some of the things I am doing right now. Hmmm, I suppose I could try siting the usercontrol on the hidden window launched from within the dll or is this just a completely different animal using this technique in a dll as opposed to a usercontrol or form in a regular project?
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7/23/2004 1:57:13 PM: AlT
Oh yeah, thanks again. This is really great stuff. I wish a lot of people here would compare their code to some of yours, Vlad's, Alexander's, etc., before begging for votes with rotating text code....
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9/4/2004 9:06:44 AM: Rde
Beware using InIDE (as is) in a dll - will not return True when compiled dll being used in IDE project.
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9/4/2004 9:18:52 AM: Rde
Very slick code Paul.
I get the feeling AIT is talking about me when I consider my submissions next to ones like this :)
Added bonus in this submission is the working uc mouse over/out solution that is second-to-none.
5 of course for this Paul, oh, and keep showing me up :)
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9/4/2004 11:48:36 AM: Paul Caton
Re InIDE, yes this is true but the code is essentially designed for UserControls that are compiled into the exe rather than external ocx's and dll's
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10/26/2004 9:52:11 AM: AlT
Hi Paul, I seem to have found a way to crash the IDE when subclssing the WM_ACTIVATE message. If I run the project and hit the IDE's minimize button, it locks up the IDE. So, I don't do that anymore. ;-) Just thought I'd see if you can reproduce it. Running VB6 SP3 on Win2K. Still love the code...especially the enums...
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10/29/2004 5:10:00 AM: Chris Cochran
At masterpiece Paul. I have a vision of you toiling obsessively over this submission, and I am sure I speak for all when I say it is sincerely appreciated.
Congrats on a great piece of work.
C
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6/23/2005 9:37:47 PM: Donn C. Romasanta
Hands down always! No argument! You're the best! Even though I don't have the need for this now, but still I voted because very name PAUL CATON makes me excited about programming VB. We're not worthy!!!{act of worship} 5 globes from me even though your already the winner...
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10/8/2005 3:17:34 PM: Option Explicit
Paul, this submission is invaluable to people like me, who like to write self contained controls. My "MorphListBox" and all my other controls would be severely diminished without this classic piece of work. Many, many thanks - Matt U.
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10/8/2005 6:34:54 PM: Paul Caton
Thanks OE, look for a new release comming, ummm soonish!
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2/13/2006 9:08:32 PM: LaVolpe
P.Caton, couple questions if you don't mind: 1) Still supporting this version? 2) What are consequences if subclass_stop/stopall not called? 3) if any consequences have you considered auto-unsubclassing when wm_destroy is received? 4) when zIdx is called, check for -1 to prevent errors with invalid hWnd param? Only place checked is subclass_Start 5) if your tlb version is what you are concentrating on now, do you have a non-tlb version -- psc makes uploading tlb (req'd with that version) difficult if not impossible.
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7/1/2006 11:48:21 AM: Soorya
Paul,
You are the right person for my question. Do u have any simple solution to system wide hook or any other trick, to make all the windows to open in Secondary Monitor instead of usual Primary (X=800). Pls. help me.
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