I want to create a window that will be the main window and that Windows itself recognizes as a main application window. However, when I make my window borderless, and without any non-client area at all, Windows no longer recognizes that this window is an application main window. This has several side effects:
WindowsKey+M minimizes all windows except my application's main window.
Clicking once on the taskbar (in win7) and then again, should toggle the application main window's state/visibility between normal and minimized state. This does not work for such a window.
In bare Win32 programming terms, I'm asking about parameter values for dwStyle as when calling CreateWindow (WS_... constants), or CreateWindowEx (WS_EX_... constants). For delphi users, these values would be set in the CreateParams method, which you would override, and then set Params.Style := WS_xxx; For MFC/C++ users and C users, something in your framework would eventually be calling CreateWindow, with this dwStyle value.
In delphi terms, setting your form.BorderStyle=bsNone, results in dwStyle=WS_POPUP. However I want a borderless window without using dwStyle=WS_POPUP.
Note: All the answers below are good, but using each in production scenarios is problematic, and my attempts to do so, have resulted in encountering many glitches, which for a professional quality application, I still find I can not work around. Davids answer is a great pure Win32 API answer though, and fits the bill. It seems that an industrial strength solution should combine multiple qualities, including all those I have in my question above. In short, borderless forms using BorderStyle=bsNone (dwStyle=WS_POPUP) block all Windows functionality that usually applies to main windows of applications, and all the solutions below solve part of it.
Based on David's suggestions, I wrote the following, which doesn't work: I want a window without a border, that behaves in all ways, like a windows application window, to the system, that is, it can be minimized/restored by clicking on the window in the taskbar, and will be minimized by WindowsKey+M. I am beginning to think that the only way to do this is to add non-client paint code and to resize the top nonclient area bounds to zero. This is of course not a trivial idea.
It turns out that I made a simple mistake in my coding (hence the two paragraphs above) and in fact the code below does now work as I desire. This one is in pascal, but it should be easy to convert it to C++ or anything else.
program NoBorderProject;
uses
Windows, Messages;
{the Messages unit contains the windows
Message constants like WM_COMMAND}
{$R *.RES}
var
wClass: TWndClass;
Msg: TMsg;
win:HWND;
function WindowProc(hWnd,Msg,wParam,lParam:Integer):Integer; stdcall;
begin
if Msg = WM_DESTROY then PostQuitMessage(0);
Result := DefWindowProc(hWnd,Msg,wParam,lParam);
end;
begin
wClass.lpszClassName:= 'CN';
wClass.lpfnWndProc := @WindowProc;
wClass.hInstance := hInstance;
wClass.hbrBackground:= 1;
RegisterClass(wClass);
win := CreateWindow(wClass.lpszClassName,'Title Bar',
WS_POPUP,//WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW or WS_VISIBLE,
10,10,340,220,0,0,hInstance,nil);
SetWindowLong(win, GWL_STYLE, WS_POPUP or WS_MINIMIZEBOX);
SetWindowLong(win, GWL_EXSTYLE, 0 );
ShowWindow(win,SW_SHOW);
while GetMessage(Msg,0,0,0) do
DispatchMessage(Msg);
end.