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TWCMIL

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Moving other application's windows

I have an application that's a Shell App bar that runs at the top of the screen.

We have a poorly written app that we use for our customer database... problem is, this application slowly moves upwards in increments at screen resolutions of 1024x768 or higher for some reason. Eventually, it works its way underneath my app bar.

So, I want my app bar to "bump" windows down X pixels if they take over (or under technically) its space. I'll probably fire it when a user moves their mouse over my App Bar or even clicks it; I think I'd need to scan for all open windows, and if their window hwnd is within the top X pixels, bump them down Y pixels...

Here's the abstract code of what I'm trying to do:

Sub MoveWindowsAtTheTop()
    For Each Window that's not maximized
        If The Top Position of the Window is within X pixels of the top of the screen Then
            Move this window down Y pixels
        End If
    Next
End Sub

I'm no API expert and I can't get past Enumerating Unmaximized, open windows. I would think I would need to use EnumWindows ; IsWindowVisible() ; GetWindowText ; GetWindowRect ; ClientToScreen ; ScreenToClient ; MoveWindow ; SetWindowPos.

Can anyone convert this to real, working VB6 code (NOT using .NET!)?
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zzzzzooc

When you create an AppBar, the desktop "space" is reserved so nothing can get in the way. You need to set the window position (SetWindowPos) of your AppBar window to z-order top so nothing is able to go above the window.

>> this application slowly moves upwards in increments at screen resolutions of 1024x768 or higher for some reason

I suggest you resolve that issue instead of looking for a solution such as what you asked for. If you'd still like an example of enumerating through all maximized windows, I can come up with something.
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lmckenzie

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TWCMIL,
    If the database app is so "poorly written", you would probably be better off rewriting it in VB.  If the app is encountering such severe problems, how trustworthy is the data being manipulated by it? VB is very string at communicating with databases.

    Just a thought.

Dang123


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ASKER

Well I've tried this:

I like the philosophy that zzzzzooc has... fix my app instead of messing with others, but from my expiriments, it's not possible to prevent every window from moving above a point on the screen. I did add the SetWindowPos() code but the problem is the application would be under the App Bar, not over it. For some reason the DB application thinks it can go under the App Bar. Quite frankly I can manually drag anything under it... it's just that this DB app strangely moves up all by itself.

I'd love to get rid of this DB application, but it's not feasible... we paid $120K+ for it, and it's a GUI front-end of our AS400, and re-training 700+ employees is just not going to happen.

I think I'll stick with the original request... lmckenzie is on track, but since my Windows API knowledge is pretty much non-existent, I just need the code to get a list of window handles so I can pass it to the function lmckenzie posted above to close & award points.
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ASKER

The combo of the 2 worked beautifully.

Thanks for all the help... points given for code writers!