I am developing a winForm application in which i am list all the running processes.
on mouseover of any process, i want preview window like (In Windows 7, when you mouse over an application in your task bar, a preview is generated showing the contents of the application window.)
See Image.
Any idea how to achieve this, i am not able to get it.
Any suggestion will be helpful.
Thanks..
full example at this site
You need two functions :
[DllImport("dwmapi.dll")]
static extern int DwmRegisterThumbnail(IntPtr dest, IntPtr src, out IntPtr thumb);
[DllImport("dwmapi.dll")]
static extern int DwmUpdateThumbnailProperties(IntPtr hThumb, ref DWM_THUMBNAIL_PROPERTIES props);
usage of DwmRegisterThumbnail
you are at your form, and process it a external program that you want to paint at your program.
IntPtr hWnd = process.MainWindowHandle;
int i = DwmRegisterThumbnail(this.Handle, hWnd, out thumb);
after registration, you just saying to windows the location to paint the picture
DWM_THUMBNAIL_PROPERTIES props = new DWM_THUMBNAIL_PROPERTIES();
props.fVisible = true;
props.dwFlags = DWM_TNP_VISIBLE | DWM_TNP_RECTDESTINATION | DWM_TNP_OPACITY;
props.opacity = 255;
props.rcDestination = new Rect(panel.Left, panel.Top, panel.Right, panel.Bottom);
DwmUpdateThumbnailProperties(thumb, ref props);
You don't need to write any code to make this happen. It's part of the Aero theme, introduced with Windows Vista and still present in Windows 7. By default, a little thumbnail of the application's window is shown when you hover over its icon in the taskbar. That's true for the Skype example you showed, and also for a C# application that you write yourself.
If you want a finer level of control over exactly what gets shown in the preview (like if you only wanted to show a small portion of your app's window), you can write some code that calls one or more of the relevant DWM API functions.
But don't write all of the P/Invoke code yourself. Use one of the existing libraries that wraps it all up in a .NET friendly way, like Windows Forms Aero or the Windows API Code Pack.
If you want your own application to display an Aero thumbnail, maybe this C++ sample could help you. Apparently it uses DwmRegisterThumbnail() to say "This HWND will now display a thumbnail of this other one".
So, a little P/Invoke call and IWin32Window
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