SQLIte should be a perfect fit. It is small, fast and well supported.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks Stuart. I'd considered that but didn't want to add the overhead and complication of using these libraries. As of late yesterday I now have an implementation that works well enough on my slow old Vista Notebook and very well on my Desktop PC. Basically doing what Chris suggested.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

I am already using a memory buffer as I said at the start: "I am double buffering the paint."

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

If this is MFC then its Window Maps are created per thread and a CWnd* object in one thread is not (easily) accessible in another. So doing UI stuff in worker threads is difficult. It is much easier to do this in the main app thread, and shuffle off any lengthy non-ui processing to worker threads.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks Chris, sounds like a good plan.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

«_Superman_» wrote:

Try writing a handler for WM_ERASEBKGND[^] and return non-zero.

Thanks, but I'm already doing that.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

I'm looking for some C++ code to let me quickly move a bitmap around a window, restoring the background as it moves. At present I capture the Window contents to a bitmap during the app initialization and in the OnPaint() I draw the this bitmap and then I draw my overlayed bitmap. I am double buffering the paint. The overlayed bitmap position moves with the mouse which invalidates the Window. This works fine except it is too slow when the background window is large (think Windows Desktop) and the PC is slow. My guess is that redrawing the large background bitmap on every mouse move is the bottleneck. There has to be a much better and faster way to do this, but my searching hasn't found the answer I need.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

modified on Sunday, October 25, 2009 5:25 PM

Thanks Iain, see my reply to ARJ 09 above.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks, see my reply to ARJ 09 above.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks all. Capturing the desktop as an image and then altering that seems like the way forward. I've been researching GDI+ and the Effect Class, and I plan on trying the BrightnessContrast Class tomorrow. I'll draw the normal rectangle area using the original desktop image. And use a window layered over the top of the desktop. Sounds like a plan.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Hi, I am trying to work out how to darken the Windows Desktop and then display a rectangular portion of the desktop normally (not darkened). This is for a screen area capture program. You can see the precise effect I am after in Jing http://www.jingproject.com/[^]. I understand how to make a window transparent, but that's not what I'm after. Fading the background in a Web page is also commonly done. Any tips/pointers/C++ source much appreciated. Google has not helped so far.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

modified on Monday, October 19, 2009 10:33 PM

Stuart Dootson wrote:

Hopefully it won't change too much more for Windows 7...Unsure

Well I'll be testing that next. But one has to assume (pray/hope) it is the same as Vista. I think I've finally found the cause which is a lurking HKCR shell\open\ddeexec = [open("%1")] entry. I thought I'd got rid of these, but this one reappeared. Maybe I'll end the week (Oz) on a good note after all.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Stuart Dootson wrote:

Neville Franks wrote: MS has changed (broken) various aspects of File Associations with Vista Mostly to do with DDE from what I've read?

Yes DDE no longer works in Vista from Explorer, yet CDocManager::RegisterShellFileTypes() still registers as a DDE client. Further RegisterShellFileTypes() still uses HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT which can't be used on Vista. There is a Linker option "Per-User Config" and AfxSetPerUserRegistration() which I assume trigger RegOverridePredefKey() so HKCR morphs across to HKCU. And finally Vista has a new IApplicationAssociationRegistration::SetAppAsDefault Method which adds an app to the list of Default Applications and uses HKCR!!! It only took me most of yesterday to get to the bottom of this. (:

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks Stuart. I just tried PM and scanned several thousand log entries but nothing really stood out. MS has changed (broken) various aspects of File Associations with Vista and MFC in VS2008 has not been updated to address these issues. That said I don't think this is the cause of the error. It seems as though Windows Explorer is misreading what is going on.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

In Windows Vista (only) when I double click on a file in Windows Explorer that is associated with my application Vista displays: Windows cannot find "abc.def". Make sure you typed the name correctly and then try again." Where abc.def is the file I double click on in Explorer and it is associated with my app. My app starts, if it isn't already running and the file does get opened correctly. Likewise if my app is already running the file is opened correctly. But this error is always displayed. If instead I use "Open With" and select my app the file opens and no error is displayed. I've Google'd and found various posts from people getting this error with Word, Excel files etc. but no real solution.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Naruki wrote:

A man applied for a job to paint someone's porch for $100.

On old one but ..... Here's $10 for the 's'.:rose:

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Naruki wrote:

My other signature is a Porche.

You should reevaluate your sig as it is "Porsche", I should know. :-D

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Forget it, couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

I have a new installation of VS2008 after a PC Rebuild and "Startup" does not appear under: Tools|Options|Environment. It was there before the rebuild. Any ideas why it is missing and how to get it to appear? In particular I want to get VS to "Load last loaded solution" at startup.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com

Thanks Stuart, that's what I was looking for. Head scratching can stop now. I've just started moving a big project from VC6 to VS2008 and was expecting various issues to confront me.

Neville Franks, Author of Surfulater www.surfulater.com "Save what you Surf" and ED for Windows www.getsoft.com