Send mouseclick without activating window?

[Mistrel]

Is it possible to send a mouseclick to a window without activating it?

[Marco2007]

Maybe if the window is disabled with DisableWindow().
But I don`t know, what you want to do...

[Mistrel]

It can probably be done with a SendMessage but it's not working to the control's hwnd. I remember there being some special message that needed to be used for the message to reach the control. Does anyone know what this is?

[eddy]

Did you try PostMessage_() ?

[Sparkie]

I've had success using PostMessage_() and or SendMessage() with any one of the following:

#WM_LBUTTONDOWN
#WM_LBUTTONUP

#WM_COMMAND/#BN_CLICK

#BM_CLICK

As for the not activating part of it... well so far I can only manage to get that to work after the initial click.

***Edit*** Now that I take a closer look, ignore my last sentence. The window does not activate when I send the button click.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

But the mouseclick can still activate a process in your main program... provided you created both windows from the same program.

[Mistrel]

The button turns out to be part of a custom button-image or something. That's why it wasn't working. I still can't get it to click but it's not important anymore. I found a much simpler solution to my problem. Thank you for you help.

[gildev]

I found a much simpler solution to my problem

What is your solution please?

[Mistrel]

The program runs in a loop expecting a certain message to intercept instead of activating it.

[Sparkie]

I still can't get it to click but it's not important anymore.

Where's your sense of adventure...your curiosity...how can you ignore that challenge...you gonna let that whimpy little button get the best of you

Send it over here and I'll show it what these 8 fingers and 2 opposable thumbs can do

jk...

Glad to see you found a workaround for this Mistrel.

[Mistrel]

Ok, Sparkie I'll give it to you.

Download AC Tool and use this script:

Code: Select all

bell

Your objective is to figure out how to send a mouseclick to the "Start" button control. And no cheating by hard-coding an off-set from the bottom-right corner of the screen.

I couldn't figure out how to send a message to this control to simulate a mouse button. The "Start" button doesn't appear to be a real button. You can confirm this with a tool like Winspector.

The correct way to do it is to have the script loop as quickly as you want and check for keyboard events that way. So, start the script once and loop it instead of each time you want it to do something.

Don't fail me in this mission, snake!

[Sparkie]

Code: Select all

Macro MakeLong(low, high) 
low | high <<16 
EndMacro 

hParent = FindWindow_("TfrmMain", 0)
If hParent
  hChild1 = FindWindowEx_(hParent, 0, "TPageControl", 0)
  If hChild1
    hChild2 = FindWindowEx_(hChild1, 0, "TTabSheet", "Commands and Macros")
    If hChild2
      hChild3 = FindWindowEx_(hChild2, 0, "TPanel", 0)
      If hChild3
        hChild4 = FindWindowEx_(hChild3, 0, "TPanel", 0)
        If hChild4
          hChild5 = FindWindowEx_(hChild4, 0, "TPanel", 0)
          If hChild5
            pause = 1000
            For bell = 1 To 5
              SendMessage_(hChild5, #WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, MakeLong(10, 60))
              Delay(100)
              SendMessage_(hChild5, #WM_LBUTTONUP, 0, MakeLong(10, 60))
              Delay(pause)
            Next
          EndIf
        EndIf
      EndIf
    EndIf
  EndIf
EndIf

[Mistrel]

I'm always impressed, Sparkie. You make it look so easy.

Thank you for this great example of navigating child controls with FindWindowEx. I hadn't thought of ever using it in such a dynamic way.

[Sparkie]

Thanks for the challenge Mistrel

[Sparkie]

By the way, I noticed a slight bug with my Delay() so I edited the code to fix it.