I have a form (TBigForm in the example below) which allows to manipulate some complex data and needs additional information to be shown. I put this info in a fsStayOnTop form (OnTopForm in the example) to ensure it's always visible but can be moved out of the way if necessary. Now when some user action in TBigForm shows a modal form this often gets hidden behind OnTopForm which makes the app look frozen. How can I avoid this? (Searching yields many, many hits but I wasn't able to distill a solution out of them.)
In my real app there are a lot of places where modal forms are shown, so I would like to avoid changing all of these calls.
Example: Create a new VCL application, drop a TButton on Form1, double-click the button and replace the generated Button1Click implementation stub with the following:
type
TBigForm = class(TForm)
strict private
OnTopForm: TForm;
Button1: TButton;
procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
protected
procedure DoHide; override;
procedure DoShow; override;
public
constructor Create(AOwner: TComponent); override;
end;
{ TBigForm }
procedure TBigForm.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
ShowMessage('Test');
end;
constructor TBigForm.Create(AOwner: TComponent);
begin
inherited CreateNew(AOwner);
Caption := 'Big form';
WindowState := wsMaximized;
Button1 := TButton.Create(Self);
Button1.Parent := Self;
Button1.Caption := 'Freeze!';
Button1.SetBounds(10, 10, 100, 100);
Button1.OnClick := Button1Click;
end;
procedure TBigForm.DoHide;
begin
OnTopForm.Free;
inherited DoHide;
end;
procedure TBigForm.DoShow;
begin
inherited DoShow;
OnTopForm := TForm.Create(Self);
OnTopForm.Caption := 'Important information';
OnTopForm.BorderStyle := bsToolWindow;
OnTopForm.FormStyle := fsStayOnTop;
OnTopForm.Position := poScreenCenter;
OnTopForm.Show;
end;
{ TForm1 }
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
f: TBigForm;
begin
f := TBigForm.Create(nil);
try
f.ShowModal;
finally
f.Free;
end;
end;
Start the app, click on "Button1" and then on "Freeze!".
(BTW: We use D2007.)