MSN Messenger Style Systray Notification Messages

[Wokawidget]

I thought word wrap was On. D'oh. Cheers

Changing the message width would make it look funny if you've alligned it to the far corner.
I have thought about this ages ago and decided not to add this in for the following reasons:

• An app should only use 1 sized message for consistancy
• I believe this code should live in the UI and not the Message dll

Does that make sesne?

Hmmm however...on second thoughts...I could add an allign property in.
Howvere I don't have time to do this at the mo as I am working on about 5 different projects at the same time and it's messing with my head. I have decided to give it a rest for a week and reclaim back my social life

Keep coming up with the good suggestions

I am about to add this into my MSN Messenger app (see link in sig) so that I can have popups like messenger for my own messenger (BTW it uses the MSN network )

Woka

[RobCrombie]

Hi,
Could it be made into a User Control ? ( .ctl )
No VBG, no OCX, no DLL

[Wokawidget]

errrr.yea.
Well I wouldn't make it into an OCX because it could be used by a DLL, and you cant use an OCX in a DLL except if you use a form (bad)

What you can do is add ALL the module, classes and forms into your normal project and it will still work.
To be fair, it's best being a DLL since more than one app can then use this.

Woka

[dlmorgan999]

This is a very nice tool but I'm having one problem. I don't know if there is a fix for this but I figured I'll ask. I got it all integrated into my application and it works perfectly - when running from the IDE.

However when I run the compiled app I run into an issue. In my compiled app I want to use this to notify users when they have received an email on our internal application email system. It works great except that there is a very high likelihood that they will be using a modal form when they get this notification.

The app works just as I want when running from the IDE but I get "Run-time error '402'" when running the compiled version. Is there anything I can do to make this work?

-- Dave

[r_karthy]

Dear Sir,
Thanks for providing a good tool.
i require this tool to be integrated in an application
Whenever the employee leave application has been sanctioned by his boss, He needs to informed like this. For this How to go about.
Please explain
Thanking you
yours
Karthikeyan R

[Wokawidget]

Here's a very very simple demo...

Woka

[Pedster]

Is there a way of resizing the actual popup, aligning all the controls, as manually resizing it in VB makes no difference...

Excellent dll by the way....... shame we need the apitimer.dll included in our package too

[Wokawidget]

if you don't want vbAPITimer.dll in your package then just take the module, and class from vbAPITimer and add them to the project you want them to be in.
The reason this is a DLL is because loads of my projects use this timing component, and it just made sense to sperate it out into it's own DLL. I am fussy like that

You can make the popup fixed. But I wanted the developer to pick the size of the message box. Bearing in mind that a few of my apps use this, and they don't want the same message sizes as some info I display is much bigger.

You can change the height and widht of the popup by using the MessageWidht and Height properties of PopupMessages Class. Is this what you wanted?

Woof

[Pedster]

if you don't want vbAPITimer.dll in your package then just take the module, and class from vbAPITimer and add them to the project you want them to be in.

Ok, I'll do that... Thanks.

You can change the height and widht of the popup by using the MessageWidht and Height properties of PopupMessages Class. Is this what you wanted?

Yes, sorry, I should take more notice of the code more.......

[RobertMa]

I'm a newbie so please don't flame if this is a really dumb question...

I compiled the projects into dll's and am calling them within my vb .net program successfully using the code below:

Dim objMsg As New vbPopUpMessages.PopUpMessage
        Dim objMsgs As New vbPopUpMessages.PopUpMessages
        objMsg.Caption = "test"
        objMsg.Message = "message"
        objMsgs.Show(objMsg)

I would like to add a custom background and thought this line would do it:

objMsg.Background = PictureBox1

But I am getting this error:

An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidCastException' occurred in program.exe

Additional information: Specified cast is not valid.


Could someone help?


Added [vbcode][/vbcode] tags - Hack

[Wokawidget]

Hmmm...it works in .NET, cool.

I am assuming it doesn't work because a .NET picturebox is not the same as a VB6 picture box

Not sure how you would do this. I'll ask some people at work.

WOka

[RobertMa]

Got it to work.

Dim objPic As New vbPopUpMessages.PopUpMessage
            objPic.Caption = "Test"
            Dim imgconv As ImageConverter
            objPic.Background = imgconv.ImageToIPicDisp(picImage.Image)
            objMsgs.Show(objPic)
 
Public Class ImageConverter
    Inherits System.Windows.Forms.AxHost
 
    Public Sub New(ByVal pGUID As String)
        MyBase.New(pGUID)
    End Sub
 
    Public Shared Function ImageToIPicDisp(ByVal value As System.Drawing.Image) As stdole.IPictureDisp
        Return System.Windows.Forms.AxHost.GetIPictureDispFromPicture(value)
    End Function
 
    Public Shared Function IPicDispToImage(ByVal value As stdole.IPictureDisp) As System.Drawing.Image
        Return System.Windows.Forms.AxHost.GetPictureFromIPictureDisp(CType(value, Object))
    End Function
End Class

Added [vbcode][/vbcode] tags - Hack

[Hack]

I'm a newbie so please don't flame if this is a really dumb question...

No one should ever be flaming anyone, so that is something you don't have to worry about (if it does happen, PM a Mod and let us handle it. )

Incidentially, as you can see, I've added [vbcode][/vbcode] tags for your two posts and request that you use them in future posts. As you can see, it makes posted code so very much easier to read.

[RobertMa]

Thanks Hack.

here is a better cursor.. give it a try

How would I switch to this smaller cursor to see how it looks? I can't find a reference to the Hand.cur anywhere.

[dedbob]

I've found that everything works very well, but I have run into a minor bug.

I've noticed that if you open a modal window while a notification window is open, the notification window timer is halted and the notification windows won't go away until the modal window is closed.. This should be fine, however, in my application I have a modal (preferences) window that can open another modal window. I've found that when the second modal window is closed, the notification windows must receive some kind of message that tells them a modal window closed, and they restart their timer and eventually try to close. However, my first modal window (preferences) is still open, and when a notification window closes while a modal window is open, you get the following error message:


---------------------------
vbPopUpMessages
---------------------------
Run-time error '402':

Must close or hide topmost modal form first
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------


I can also get the same error message to appear if I open a modal window while a notification is in the process of closing (while it's sliding back down).


It seems that the windows will not begin the closing operation (sliding back down) if a modal window is open, but it appears that it's the actual unloading of the window that cannot happen while a modal window is open.. Any suggestions on how to either prevent the notification window from unloading itself while a modal window is displayed, delay the unloading of the notification window until after the modal window is unloaded, or possibly unload the notification windows without the error message being displayed?

Thanks in advance!

[Wokawidget]

Is this when running in the IDE or from compiled code?

WOka

[dedbob]

Running compiled code causes the crash.

No crashes when running in IDE.. I'm guessing because there's probably some difference in how the IDE emulates the modal window..

[dedbob]

Any new info or suggestions of the modal window error message?

For now I've worked around the issue by closing all current popups immediately prior to the modal window being shown, and disabling the creation of new popups while the modal window is visible.. But a cleaner solution would definitely be appreciated..

Thanks again!

[Wokawidget]

nope noone what so ever. This code was written years ago in vb6. Alas, I have progressed and don't code in vb6 anymore. I very much doubt I will ever do anymore modifications to any of my vb6 projects. I do however, intend to write some .net versions...hopefully.

woof

[shakti5385]

Nice code

[Flattery]

I have a program that uses this but if compiled on Windows XP with no service packs installed, the popups don't work on a system with Service Packs installed (such as SP2) and vice versa.

The rest of my program still works, but what part of the popup program is it that doesn't work when running on a different system?

[明日的天空]

我晕,说不到E文的了??

MSN源码么?
下个下来先看看了,呵

欢迎访问我的网站
http://vb.gzcg.com
Welcome

I'm from China, Don't Spack English!!

MSN source code?

[明日的天空]

Speak Chinese,OK

[kleinma]

You probably won't find much help here. Your typing doesn't even show up due to chinese font.

[Wokawidget]

I have a program that uses this but if compiled on Windows XP with no service packs installed, the popups don't work on a system with Service Packs installed (such as SP2) and vice versa.

The rest of my program still works, but what part of the popup program is it that doesn't work when running on a different system?

Hmmm...I am not sure why this would happen. Makes no sense
If you compile on a SP2 XP machine does it then work on another sp2 xp machine?

Wopka

[Wokawidget]

Speak Chinese,OK

I am afraid that this is an English speaking web site
Most of the users here, I would say about 99.999% of them, are from the UK, Europe and the US. Chinese alas, is not a spoken language of these countries I am afraid. (yea yea I know Europe isn't a country).

Woka

[knightcon]

Hey guy's,

I think this is a great dll for any background/sysbar app. Just wondering if there is any way that something like this could be done in Javascript?

[Wokawidget]

Thanks

Javascript?

For a web page?

check out:

WebMessenger.msn.com

So, in answer to your question, yes, it can be done
But it's not entirely done in JS.

Is that what you meant?

WOka

[penagate]

Check out meebo.com as well.

The client front end can be made in Javascript, but the actual communication must be done server-side, due to cross-domain scripting limitations imposed by browsers.

[Wokawidget]

cool. Nice UI.

Long time no see *waves*

Woof

[knightcon]

thanks but I wasn't after internet messaging, i just wanted to know if the alert window show at the beginning of this topic could be used with a web browser,

browsers would be...
IE, Firefox, Safari, etc

[penagate]

Oops, thought we were in a different thread.

Woka's link shows popup messages like these using Javascript. But, it relies on popup windows. Most browsers will block these by default.

If you want to show it on the page, that's easy: just use an absolutely positioned div element.

[Wokawidget]

Woka's link shows popup messages like these using Javascript. But, it relies on popup windows. Most browsers will block these by default.

Yup. That's why I posted it

I am sure you can use JS to popup windows inside IE, but not near the systray. Those you see from webmessenger are, as Pengate stated, popup windows.


Woof

[bazzacad]

This is some great code. I've been looking fro a free version of this for a while now. Can someone tell me how to get it to work in VB.NET 2005 Express?
I still have VB6, if I need to compile it there first.

Thx.

[Wokawidget]

You should be able to compile it as normal in VB6. Make sure all dlls are registered on the VS 2005 machine. Then just reference the popup dll as a com reference...i think.

Woka

[feneck]

Wow, this code is really something. Good work Woka.

[knightcon]

I really like this control. I have been writing several applications for family and friends that check to see when an email comes through on any of their POP3 emails and this control has allowed me to get rid of the annoying message box and replace it with a non-obtrusive message box in the bottom corner just like in MSN messenger.

[Wokawidget]

Glad you like it
Much much better than a msg box

I really should write a .NET version.

[obrienkev]

Hi,

How do I use this brilliant application for my Windows C# Application??

Thanks.

[Justin M]

lol this is nice, but if I use this in my program will I be sued?