Notification of working area changing

[Rune Jacobsen]

Hi there,

I have an application that among other things will pop up little alert
notification windows, not unlike what MSN does when a contact signs on.
Depending on the user configuration, the user could get quite a lot of
these.

I want to be notified when the Working Area (i.e. the area of the screen
not covered by the task bar or other such toolbars) changes, so that I
can update the positions of my alert windows. Currently, if I resize my
taskbar to take up half the screen, the alerts on the bottom half will
simply move upwards, and at least partially cover each other. If I
resize the taskbar back down, the windows will not move at all.

Is there a way for me to pick up a change here? I would like to pick up
on it immediately, as polling for it several times a second seems quite
excessive - this will after all not happen very often.

I have tried looking for WM_DISPLAYCHANGE in my WndProc, but it does not
fire unless the actual screen resolution changes - in which case the
working area also changes, but this is not the only situation in wich
the working area can change.

Does anyone know of a good way to handle this situation? My windows are
regular "always on top" windows that the user can dismiss with a
keystroke, no taskbar or anything involved.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Rune

 

[Rob]

I want to be notified when the Working Area (i.e. the area of the screen
not covered by the task bar or other such toolbars) changes

Look for WM_SETTINGCHANGE with SPI_SETWORKAREA.

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms645413.aspx and
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms725497.aspx for details.

--Rob