This is an article about how to use a progressbar control that follows the mouse cursor. It uses a systemwide hook so it knows its parent.
Check it out on:
Codeproject.com
Codeguru.com
Planetsourcecode.com
Mouse progress control
Introduction
This article introduces a mouse progress control that follows the mouse. The solution is based on global Windows hooking and it uses a dll that is dynamically imported to the application.
Background
I have created several applications and utils that process a lot of information. Usually it is time consuming and the users have to wait. I used to create a popup window with a progressbar to indicate the wait time; sometimes the GUI itself contains the progress. After a search for a better solution someone suggested to set the mouse cursor with the hourglass. The hourglass is a good idea, but I wanted it to show a progressbar.
I tested two solutions for the “problem”, the first solution was a 100 mouse cursors that contained the mouse and a progressbar. That solution did work, but several users complained about their “fancy” cursor changed to my dull cursor-look 🙂
The second solution was to hook the system and create an owner draw progress control that followed the mouse. And that resulted into this article :).
I’m just finishing off a new version of SizeMe and the music mode part of the program takes a while since it: reads each mp3-file ID-tag, index it, then sort it, and then groups it. That process takes time and the user had to have some feedback on that. Since SizeMe has a clean GUI I thought this would be a great idea. That is the main reason why I created this control in the first place, but hey I love to share 🙂
Layout
I’m more of a programmer than designer. But I did create 2 out of 3 designs in this control 🙂 Here are the three flours:
Smooth:
This style looks like the default progress control with PBS_SMOOTH option on. It is plain looking and it is possible to add a percent text on top of it.
Mac:
This style is sooo more good looking. The idea and design is originally made by Paul M. Meidinger (“Macintosh-like Progress Control”). It uses degrades of the selected colors. Also here is it possible to add percent to on top of it.
Round:
This little puppy is my “masterpiece”. Inspired by the Mac-control & some progress bars I saw in games I decided to create a round-looking-progressbar. It is possible to customize on which angle it should start and end, plus the width of the progress fillings.
Using the code
The Mouse progress class uses a dll which sets a system wide hook. That does not mean that you need to add the .lib-file to the project because the dll is dynamically loaded. To implement the code into your existing project you only need to add these files:
- MousePrg.cpp
- MousePrg.h
- MousePrgVars.h
- MousePrgHook.h
And copy the MousePrgHook.dll file to where the executable file is.
You should create the class on the heap and delete it when you’re finished. (Remember since it uses a hook the DLL will load into each program that is active after execution, and it does not need to be active when not in use!). A typical usage of it could be like this:
//Class defs
CMousePrg *pMProgress;
//(...)
//When you start time consuming process (this is a MFC example, on win32 you usually have the instance/hwnd handles)
pMProgress = new CMousePrg(AfxGetInstanceHandle(), this->GetSafeHwnd());
//(...)
//While you are moving along processing your stuff
pMProgress->SetPercent(nPercent);
//Delete the progress when you're finished.
if(bFinished==TRUE)
{
delete pMProgress;
pMProgress=NULL;
}
//(...)
The CMousePrg class inits the hook and start drawing the progress. It will show until you delete the object. It is meant to be that way, so you are “forced” to delete class and the hook get detached. (Many hooks might slow things down, I guess).
Defaults
The defaults are listed in the MousePrgVars.h header file. Here is the list over the defaults and which choices available
| Option | Default Value | Description |
| #define CLASS_MOUSEPROGRESS | “STATIC_MOUSE_CLASS_WINDOW” | Name of the class used for drawing the progress control. Could be any name, but it has to be unique |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_POSITION | PROGRESS_BOTTOM | Placement of the progress control around the mouse cursor. Values valid: PROGRESS_TOP, PROGRESS_BOTTOM, PROGRESS_LEFT, PROGRESS_RIGHT. |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_HORISONTAL_HEIGHT | 20 | Horizontal height of the control |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_HORISONTAL_WIDTH | 100 | Hori |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_VERTICAL_HEIGHT | WM_PROGRESS_HORISONTAL_WIDTH | Vertical height of the control. Usually the opposite to the horizontal |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_VERTICAL_WIDTH | WM_PROGRESS_HORISONTAL_HEIGHT | Vertical width of the control. Usually the opposite to the horizontal |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_ROUND_SIZE | 60 | This is the width and height of round styled progress control |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TYPE | PROGRESS_MAC | This is the style of the control. It has three choices: PROGRESS_SMOOTH, PROGRESS_MAC and PROGRESS_ROUND (the round style ignores the WM_PROGRESS_POSITION) |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_COLOR | RGB(255,0,0) | Default color of the progress fills. It is valid for all three styles |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_COLOR_BACKGROUND | RGB(200,200,200) | Default background color of the progress. It is valid for all three styles (cannot be changed on the fly, for no reason :)) |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_COLOR_SHADOW | RGB(0,0,0) | When the option WM_PROGRESS_TYPE is set to PROGRESS_MAC and it is shown on position TOP or BOTTOM then this color is drawn in front of the progress. |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_ROUND_WIDTH | 12 | The width of the bar based of the progress bar (should not be equal or wider than WM_PROGRESS_ROUND_SIZE/2) |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_ROUND_ANGLE | 130 | This is the angle that we cut from. A value of 130 will show a circle from -130 degree to 130 degree. |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TEXT | PROGRESS_YES | Show a percent text on top of the smooth and Mac styled control |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TEXT_FONT | “Verdana” | Font name of the percent text |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TEXT_SIZE | 12 | Font size of the percent text |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TEXT_COLOR | RGB(255,255,255) | Text color of the percent text |
| #define WM_PROGRESS_TEXT_ALIGN | (DT_SINGLELINE | DT_VCENTER | DT_CENTER) | Font output options when the text is drawn to the screen |
Known issues
I haven’t found a good way to detect if a HWND is a context menu or not. There have been several attempts to detect that, but no success. I wanted the progressbar to be hidden while a context menu was opened. That way it wouldn’t slide in the background while to you select. I’ve tried to catch the WM_INITMENU and WM_EXITMENU messages but the WH_GETMESSAGE hook does not seem to catch those. Any suggestion on this problem would be great!
Another problem is when a message queue inits a modal dialog that locks the parent queue. In those cases you have to run the Hide() function to quickly hide the progress.
Points of Interest
System wide hooks are a cool feature, but it has some challenges along the way. I wanted the mouse progress control to work on many different instances at the same time. But that does not work when the DLL-file is named the same. It seems to me that Windows is so “smart” that a dll-file loaded twice with the same name does not get loaded a second time. I did some searching and found different solutions to the problem. Earlier on I did use the BASS Sound SDK. Ian (the programmer of BASS) handled different instances of the library by copying the file with a unique name, and then loads it. That worked for me to, and the system is hooked once pr instance created by the class.
History
v1.0 – First public release
Thanks!