Recipe 11.2 Flash a Window's Titlebar or Icon
11.2.1 Problem
With
so many windows open in your Access applications, it can be difficult
to force your user's attention to a specific form.
Is there a way to make the titlebar flash so that a form really
stands out?
11.2.2 Solution
Windows
supplies a simple API call, FlashWindow, that
allows you to flash the titlebar of a form or its icon (if
it's iconized) on and off. This solution will
demonstrate how you can use the FlashWindow API call to draw
attention to a specific form.To include this functionality in your own applications, follow these
steps:
- Add this API declaration to your code in the declarations section of
the form's module:Private Declare Function FlashWindow Lib "User32" _
In our example, the declaration is in the module for frmControlFlash.
(ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal lngInvert As Long) As Long - Create a module-level variable (mhWnd in
our example) to hold the flashed form's window
handle:Dim mhWnd As Long
- Create a procedure attached to your
controlling form's Timer event, causing the form to
flash:Private Sub Form_Timer( )
FlashWindow mhWnd, True
End Sub - To turn the flashing on and off, add
code like this to react to some event (on the sample form, you
trigger the code in reaction to the Click event of the Flash button):Private Sub cmdFlash_Click( )
Dim strCaption As String
Dim ctl As Control
Set ctl = Me.cmdFlash
strCaption = ctl.Caption
If strCaption = "Flash" Then
' If the form's already open, this will just
' set the focus to that form.
DoCmd.OpenForm "frmFlash"
mhWnd = Forms("frmFlash").hWnd
' Change the button's caption to
' indicate its state.
ctl.Caption = "Stop Flashing"
Me.TimerInterval = 500
Else
ctl.Caption = "Flash"
Me.TimerInterval = 0
FlashWindow mhWnd, False
End If
End Sub
To see an example of a flashing form, load and run
frmControlFlash from
11-02.MDB. That form loads a second form,
frmFlash. By clicking the button on frmControlFlash, you can turn the
flashing of frmFlash's titlebar on or off (see Figure 11-2). If you iconize frmFlash, it will continue to
flash.
Figure 11-2. frmControlFlash causes frmFlash's titlebar to invert (flash)
11.2.3 Discussion
The FlashWindow API call takes two
values as its parameters: the handle to a window and a logical value.
When Windows creates a new window (as it does when you open a form in
Access), it supplies the window with a unique 32-bit value, its
handle, that any program can use to work directly with that window.
Access gives you a form's handle in its hWnd
property. Given that handle and a Boolean value
(True or False) indicating
whether you want the window to invert or not,
FlashWindow takes the requested action with the
window you've indicated. For example:
FlashWindow Forms("frmFlash").hWnd, True
would make the titlebar of frmFlash look like it
is selected, even if it isn't the currently active
form. Sending False for the second parameter would
revert to the form's original state (selected or
deselected). Calling FlashWindow, passing
True in the second parameter, is what makes the
window look like it's flashing; this is where the
Timer event comes in.By reacting to a form's
Timer event, you can have your code take effect at a set interval. In
this case, you set the timer interval to be 500, or 1/2 of a second
(the TimerInterval property measures time in milliseconds, or 1/1,000
of a second):
Me.TimerInterval = 500
To make it so that the code attached to the Timer event never runs,
set the TimerInterval property to 0. That's how you
control the flashing in this example: to turn flashing on, set the
TimerInterval property to the rate at which you'd
like the flashing to occur; to turn it off, just set the
TimerInterval property to 0.This example takes one extra step: when it turns off the flashing, it
also makes sure that the caption bar of the flashed form is no longer
inverted. That is, it calls FlashWindow one more
time, forcing the flashing off:
Me.TimerInterval = 0
FlashWindow mhWnd, False
This ensures that no matter where in the cycle you turn off the
flashing, the flashed form reverts to its normal appearance.You can control the speed of the flashing by changing the
TimerInterval property value. Currently, it's set at
500; you may want to speed that up. Be aware, though, that flashing
is not a normal Windows mechanism; it goes against the Windows design
standards, and should be used only for brief periods of time and in
special circumstances.Because FlashWindow accepts the handle to any
window as its parameter, you could use this same technique to cause
an application's main window to flash as well. For
example, The Solution in Recipe 11.9 shows
how to retrieve a list of all open top-level windows, and you could
use the hWnd properties from that list with
FlashWindow as well.Note that even though the form's Timer event is set
to do its work every 500 ms, it may take longer for your flashing
form to start flashing. The code in the form's Timer
event sends a message to Windows, telling it to flash the other
form's titlebar, but that may take a few
milliseconds on a slower machine. For the same reason, your form may
not flash at exactly regular intervals. The form's
timer handler is non-preemptive, meaning that it must wait for
keyboard, mouse, and screen events to be handled first.