CreateWindowEx, DestroyWindow, CreateWindowEx

[jkirkerx]

I made a toolbar in my program, and on the main menubar, made a "View" menu item with a list of toolbars. So I wrote CreateWindowEx to create the toolbar on program load. When you click the red X on the toolbar, I DestroyWindow, and the toolbar is gone. Then if I go to View, and click the toolbar, I run CreateWindowEx and make the Toolbar again. Symptom: When I make the toolbar the 2nd time, the toolbar window is not active. I can load stuff in it, but can't use the red x or the treeview inside the window. I get get focus on the window to use it. Question: I'm not sure what I did wrong, or if I'm just missing something in one of the Proc's.

[jkirkerx]

That was a really bad idea there. I went back to hide and show, and figured out how to avoid the WM_DESTROY message when clicking the close button on the window bar.

[Binu MD]

could you post the CreateWindowEx() code snippet :)

[jkirkerx]

It turned out to be a big mess. The Bool bRegister was a unsuccessful attempt to unregister the class after it was created. I thought if I could create the class, create the window, that I could destroy the window, and unregister the class to create a clean slate, and start the process again. On the 2nd time around, the window would paint, but it would not respond. When I took the other toolbar and dragged it across the regenerated toolbar, the regenerated toolbar would not paint again and dissappear. So I added the WS_CLIPSIBLINGS, and upon regeneration, no window at all. So I went back to show and hide, and added a return 1 to the WM_CLOSE in the Windows Proc, to cancel destroying the window, and to just run ShowWindow and update the checkbox in the main menu.

HWND _project_Explorer_Create( HWND hWndMain, HINSTANCE hInstance, HWND hMDIClientArea, HWND hWndStatusBar )
{

hProjectExplorer\_Instance = hInstance;
LoadString( hInstance, IDM\_PROJECT\_EXPLORER\_CLASS, sz\_ProjectExplorer\_Class, MAX\_LOADSTRING );

//BOOL bRegister = FALSE;
//bRegister = UnregisterClass( sz\_ProjectExplorer\_Class, hInstance );
//DWORD dwErrorCode = GetLastError();
	
WNDCLASSEX toolWindow;
toolWindow.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);

if ( !GetClassInfoEx( hInstance, sz\_ProjectExplorer\_Class, &toolWindow ) ) {

	toolWindow.style		= CS\_HREDRAW | CS\_VREDRAW;
	toolWindow.lpfnWndProc		= \_project\_Explorer\_WndProc;
	toolWindow.cbClsExtra		= 0;
	toolWindow.cbWndExtra		= 0;
	toolWindow.hInstance		= hInstance;
	toolWindow.hIcon		= 0;
	toolWindow.hCursor		= 0;
	toolWindow.hbrBackground	= (HBRUSH)(COLOR\_WINDOW+1);
	toolWindow.lpszMenuName		= 0;
	toolWindow.lpszClassName	= sz\_ProjectExplorer\_Class;
	toolWindow.hIconSm              = 0;

	RegisterClassEx( &toolWindow );

}
								
RECT winRect, statusBarRect;
INT winWidth, winHeight, tbWidth, tbHeight, sbWidth, sbHeight;	

if(GetWindowRect( hMDIClientArea, &winRect)) {
	winWidth = winRect.right - winRect.left;
	winHeight = winRect.bottom - winRect.top;

	GetWindowRect( hWndStatusBar, &statusBarRect );
	sbWidth = statusBarRect.right - statusBarRect.left;
	sbHeight = statusBarRect.bottom - statusBarRect.top;
					
	tbWidth = 250;
	tbHeight = (INT)floor(( (float)winHeight \* (float).60 ) - 1 );		
	
	// Create the Project Explorer Window
	hWnd\_ProjectExplorer = CreateWindowEx(
		WS\_EX\_TOOLWINDOW,
		sz\_ProjectExplorer\_Class,
		TEXT( "Project Explorer" ),
		WS\_CHILD | WS\_SYSMENU | WS\_CAPTION

[Binu MD]

thanks for ur reply, use this code snippet .......... static bool reg =false; WNDCLASSEX wcex; wcex.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX); wcex.style = CS_HREDRAW | CS_VREDRAW; wcex.lpfnWndProc = WndProc; wcex.cbClsExtra = 0; wcex.cbWndExtra = 0; wcex.hInstance = hInstance; wcex.hIcon = LoadIcon(hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDI_APPLICATION)); wcex.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW); wcex.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_WINDOW+1); wcex.lpszMenuName = NULL; wcex.lpszClassName = szWindowClass; wcex.hIconSm = LoadIcon(wcex.hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDI_APPLICATION)); if( reg ) { UnregisterClass(szWindowClass, hInstance ); } if (!RegisterClassEx(&wcex)) { MessageBox(NULL, _T("Call to RegisterClassEx failed!"), _T("Win32 Guided Tour"), NULL); return 1; } reg = true; .............

[jkirkerx]

Well thanks, but I'm not going to try that. I don't see the point of it. I'd rather have an explanation as to why I can't destroy a window and it's class and recreate it like an MDI Child Window.

[JohnCz]

Toolbar with treeview? What kind of toolbar you are referring to? Are you sure you are creating a toolbar? Maybe it is a tool window? Could you please post a snippet showing how you create this toolbar.

JohnCz

[jkirkerx]

It's a tool window, I just called it a toolbar so folks got the bigger picture of what I was trying to do. So far so good, I have my MDI frame, and the 2 sidebars (toolbars) on the left. They size correctly, move and resize upon mid resize. The hide and show works good. Next phase is to dock them, but I need to tighten up the program first, and do an initial alpha test release. Hopefully this week.