Show my form, only when certain controls are visible.

[undcover]

Hello, I'm automating part of the note taking ability of my old bad POS, I managed to do much of the heavy lifting in the past weeks, I can finally do everything i want and more.

Now I have a form with two buttons that expand the form to show a note taking beast that can lets us escape the hell of the one way editing the POS actually support (no cursor just delete. want to change the time on that order better delete everything and start the note from scratch, well not anymore)

Now i'm stuck, my form shows up as two buttons over the POS window, however I need it to go away when I minimized the POS or switch to a different page or application, I was able to do so by doing a while loop, it worked badly as it will repeat the show command infinitely and if i break the loop then there's no way to restart the loop if the user didn't interact with the buttons directly.

I have many ways I could know when controls are visible and it worked, I just don't have a way of constantly checking for this without straining the CPU, I know if I work it somehow I could do a while loop that can work, but it'll be CPU intensive. (Bad POS entails BAD PC)

Should I make another form that does the loop? can I make the loop slower ?

I'm using  VB.net VS 2017 with AutoitX dll.

EDIT: Hello anyone who searched for this, if you're and idiot like me and forgot that Timers exist then this will jog your memory

 

Add a timer to your form, set the timer for 1 sec intervals (dealers choice)

start your timer (within form load or manually)

Timer1.start()

then double click the timer to create a Timer tick (for my case the control visibility test i want to make each second)

it should look something like this :

    Private Sub timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles timer1.Tick
        dim visibleform = ait.ControlCommand("my app", "", "[NAME:wacontact]", "IsVisible", "")
        If visibleform = 0 Then
            Me.Hide()
    ElseIf visibleform = 1 And Me.Visible = False Then ' to prevent the timer ticks from interupting any sendkeys or something we put two conditions.
            Me.Show()
        End If
    End Sub

remarks: ait. is the call I set for Autoit DLL.
 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by undcover
Solved it myself. showing how for future searchers.

[careca]

If i understood correctly, you could check the Z order of the window.

Check the POS window is minimized, if it is, hide the buttons, else, show.

There may be more than 2 ways of doing this.

[undcover]

10 minutes ago, careca said:

If i understood correctly, you could check the Z order of the window.

Check the POS window is minimized, if it is, hide the buttons, else, show.

There may be more than 2 ways of doing this. 

I have so many ways to check if the window is minimized or the control hidden, It works fine... my problem is with constantly checking that state and adjusting my form shown, hidden status accordingly. (the app has no windows)

every loop i do ends up crashing.

[undcover]

Public Class Form2
    Dim ait As New AutoItX3
    Public visibleform

    Function firstloop()
        visibleform = ait.ControlCommand("mytest app", "", "[NAME:wacontact]", "IsVisible", "")
        If visibleform = 1 And Form1.Visible = True Then
            Form1.Hide()
        End If
        secondloop()
    End Function
    Function secondloop()
        visibleform = ait.ControlCommand("mytestapp", "", "[NAME:wacontact]", "IsVisible", "")
        If visibleform = 0 And Form1.Visible = False Then
            Form1.Show()
        End If
        firstloop()
    End Function
    Private Sub Form2_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        firstloop()
    End Sub
End Class

This self made loop didn't work for me either, but should give you an idea of my problem.

[careca]

Only now i noticed this is autoitX.

I was thinking about the "regular" autoit.

Sry cant help with this.

[undcover]

No worries just solved it, it was way easier than i thought i just had a brain freeze for few hours.