tool tip text without form focus

[seanwpb]

i have a small form and it just has a label control on it and i want without giving the form fucus to be able to have tool tip text or something like it when the mouse hovers over it without clicking. is this possible?

[RhinoBull]

So why not assigning the ToolTipText property for that label?

[seanwpb]

I do have a tooltip text for the label but since the form doesnt have focus it wont display

[Spoo]

Sean

One possibility is to use MouseMove.

The following code snippet is for a FlexGrid named fcLOG.
I just tried it on a form that does not have focus, and it
still triggers and calls the sub.

On a form named vs2006

Private Sub fcLOG_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, x As Single, y As Single)
    '
    bn77oVarsMouseSort x, y
    '
End Sub

In a module

Public Sub bn77oVarsMouseSort(nXX, nYY)
    '
    With vs2006
        With .fcLOG
            Select Case nYY
                Case Is < 480
                    vs2006.pbF(0).Visible = False
                    vs2006.txtTIPver2.Visible = False
                Case Is >= 480
                    ' >> code here to launch a TextBox to act as a ToolTip
            End Select
        End With
    End With
    '
End Sub

It may be more than you need ... modify to suit your situation.
Hope it helps.

EDIT: I added the module's code. You don't need to put it in a module,
mine just happened to be in one.

Spoo

[seanwpb]

Spoo,

thank you i got this to work

Private Sub Label1_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)


 With Form1
        With .Label1
            Select Case Y
                Case Is < 600
                MsgBox "Testing"
                ' >> code here to launch a TextBox to act as a ToolTip
                    
                
            End Select
        End With
    End With
    
End Sub

it will launch a msgbox but of course i need something more like a tooltip. what do you mean when you say launch a text box to act as a tooltip?

[Spoo]

Sean

Hey, glad to hear it.

Regarding "launch a textbox to act as a tooltip" .. sorry for the
incomplete reference. I was referring to (in my case) vs2006.txtTIPver2

It is a TextBox control I manually added to the form ...

• Visible = False
• BackColor = light yellow - in the Properties window it reads
  &H00C0FFFF& which is equivalent to RGB(255, 255,150)
• Height = 285
• Width = 975
• Top = 6960
• Left = 1320
• MultiLine = True

I then had code in the Case Is >= 480 branch to reconfigure and
populate the TextBox as needed. The code also repositioned it relative
to the Top, Left, and Width of the FG.

Keep in mind that the MouseMove event returns coordinates relative to
the control in question (me - FlexGrid, you - Label), as opposed to
the Form.

I wanted there to be a zone within the FG that would be "hot" -- ie, show
the tooltip. Thus, if nYY < 480, the tooltip would turn off, otherwise it
would be visible. This is rather tight. Sometimes, if I moved the mouse
too rapidly, the tooltip would not get turned off. So, as a backup, I
also had a MouseMove event on the Form itself to turn off the tooltip.

I hope that explains things a little more clearly.

Spoo

[seanwpb]

Spoo,

your concept is very cleaver. the pop up text box would work well for me except for my app is a little button that floats on thop of all other windows. i made it for a panic button at my work. so since its really small the popup text box wouldnt work. so using the first part of your code im half way there. i just need to figure out something to pop up now. any ideas?

[Hack]

You only have two choices really...a form or a message box.

You can make the form borderless and very, very small. You can set a timer on it so it will unload itself.

[Spoo]

Sean

Given the additional info you've provided, it seems that Hack's two
alternatives remain your best bet.

A question, though.. if your Form is basically a Button, what sort of info
would the ToolTip provide? That is, what are you trying to accomplish?
Perhaps if you could attach a screen-grab, we could get a better sense
of things.

Spoo

[seanwpb]

the little form should work fine. i will work on that tonight.

the application is a panic button app that starts up with the pc and is movable and when double clicked it creates a record that will pop up an alert on teh security guards pc that there is a security alert. the app works great but i want a type of tooltip text to notify any new users on our computer to exactly what this thing is on there screen. it doesnt look like any other window because its round and is always on top. and the size of a quarter on their screen. this is a hospital so we have all different type of users

[RhinoBull]

With form's being out of focus mouse_move won't work at all.
In addition to Hack's suggestion (small form) you will need few api:
- GetCursorPos (to get presize position of your cursor on the screen); POINAPI type will need to be defined (x,y)
- GetWindowRect (to get your form's window rectangle adjusted to include label position+size); you will also need to define RECT type (left, top, right, width)

On timer event (interval can be as little as 10-20) you will need to get current cursor postion and then check whether or not it is within your defined rectangle.
If it is then show your own tooltip form.

I believe I have very similar sample(s) already posted so try searching through my posts (either of those api should bring back results).



ps, best way over all would be to subclass one of "move" messages but that is also much complicated approach.