“Speech bubble” notifications

Question

I'm trying to get a notification to pop up something like these bubbles in an MFC application:

caps lock still on image http://www.humanized.com/weblog/images/caps_lock_indication.png

I'm currently making an interface mockup in C# to show some stakeholders, so it would be nice to have it there too.

It doesn't necessarily have to be speech-bubble-esque: it could be something like a tooltip - but it does have to appear without mouse-over

Cheers!

Answer 1

Have a look on CodeProject (C#) :)

Answer 2

You could just use System.Windows.Forms.ToolTip.

using System.Windows.Forms;

...

ToolTip myTip = new ToolTip; // create tooltip
myTip.IsBaloon = true; // give it a round shape
myTip.SetToolTip( myTool, "You're hovering above myTool." ); // register popup message for 'myTool'
...
myTip.Show(myTool, "Forced modal pop-up.", 1000 ); // display pop up message for 1 sec at 'myTool'

Answer 3

Just found this on CodeProject. Downloaded the sample and it works well actually. I'm going to add this to my own code repository; never know when I may need this!

Answer 4

It's a standard windows mechanism (since XP), they're called Balloon Tooltips. Depending on where you want to display the balloon, you can use CEdit's ShowBalloonTip method or Shell_NotifyIcon API.

There's NotifyIcon class in Windows Forms, but I don't know about TextBox, you would probably have to use interop.