need to capture all keystrokes... api perhaps?

[MrPolite]

I want my usercontrol to close whenever the user presses the Escape key, whether the control has the focus or not. I'm just wondering how I can capture the keypress events with my usercontrol (just they keystrokes that happen in my form)

[dynamic_sysop]

you need to set KeyPreview to True , then use the override process keypreview, here's a quick example...

[Color=Blue]Private[/color] [Color=Blue]Sub[/color] Form1_Load([Color=Blue]ByVal[/color] sender [Color=Blue]As[/color] System.Object, [Color=Blue]ByVal[/color] e [Color=Blue]As[/color] System.EventArgs) [Color=Blue]Handles[/color] [Color=Blue]MyBase[/color].Load
        KeyPreview = [Color=Blue]True
[/color]    [Color=Blue]End[/color] [Color=Blue]Sub
 
[/color]    [Color=Blue]Protected[/color] [Color=Blue]Overrides[/color] [Color=Blue]Function[/color] ProcessKeyPreview([Color=Blue]ByRef[/color] m [Color=Blue]As[/color] System.Windows.Forms.Message) [Color=Blue]As[/color] [Color=Blue]Boolean
[/color]        [Color=Blue]If[/color] m.WParam.ToInt32 = 27 [Color=Blue]Then
[/color]            [Color=Green]'///[/color] [Color=Green]do[/color] [Color=Green]stuff[/color] [Color=Green]to[/color] [Color=Green]your[/color] [Color=Green]UserControl[/color] [Color=Green]because[/color] [Color=Green]the[/color] [Color=Green]Escape[/color] [Color=Green]Key[/color] [Color=Green]was[/color] [Color=Green]pressed[/color] [Color=Green].[/color] [Color=Green]
[/color]        [Color=Blue]End[/color] [Color=Blue]If
[/color]    [Color=Blue]End[/color] [Color=Blue]Function[/color]

[MrPolite]

hmm weird, I thought I cant use keypreview since the user control doesnt have a keypreview property.... umm so the parent form's keypreview is set to true and then I can override the processKeyPreview sub in teh usercontrol? hmm

[MrPolite]

doesnt seem to work. I want the usercontrol to capture the keystrokes.

[dynamic_sysop]

sorry i thought with this...

how I can capture the keypress events with my usercontrol (just they keystrokes that happen in my form)

you wanted to catch the keystrokes in the Form that the usercontrol resided on.

[MrPolite]

Originally posted by dynamic_sysop
sorry i thought with this... you wanted to catch the keystrokes in the Form that the usercontrol resided on.

well yeah I explained it a bit bad.. what I meant was that I dont want to capture all the keys that are pressed while the user is running windows (basically, I dont want a keylogger ) I want the usercontrol to capture any keys that are pressed in my application

I tried adding a KeyPress event for every control in my usercontrol. but for some reason the only event that works is the keyPress event for the usercontrol itself.

[Volvere]

Use Application.AddMessageFilter function. You can have more than one MessageFilter to filter out different messages(mouse, keyboard, etc...). The following example is taken from MSDN.

' Creates a message filter.
Public Class TestMessageFilter
   Implements IMessageFilter

   Public Function PreFilterMessage(ByRef m As System.Windows.Forms.Message) _
   As Boolean Implements IMessageFilter.PreFilterMessage
      ' Blocks all the messages relating to the left mouse button.
      If ((m.Msg >= 513) And (m.Msg <= 515)) Then
         Console.WriteLine("Processing the messages : " & m.Msg)
         Return True
      End If
      Return False
   End Function
End Class