CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.netwinforms
MattM
MattM

Reputation: 91

Why does my form appear behind everything?

I have a program where I need to do some initial work before calling the form, so I disabled the Application Framework setting and wrote my own Main function with a call to Application.Run(myForm) when it's time to run the form.

Everything was working fine, no problems, but now I have need of some other service before opening the form. Rather than add all that code to this program, it has all been moved into its own executable. This second program can edit files that the first program will use, so I need the first program to wait so that it will read up those changes (should they be made). I suppose could just as easily use the Shell function, but for various reasons I'm creating my own Process object and calling it/waiting on it through that.

Anyway, I make this call to the second program some time before the Application.Run call. The first program waits its turn, and I can interact with the second program successfully, no trouble at all. But when it's done, the window for the first program is hidden behind any other windows that are on the screen. This doesn't happen in XP, only in Vista (and maybe 7, but I haven't confirmed yet). I've already tried manually forcing the form to appear in front, minimize then maximize, get focus, etc, but nothing brings it to the front unless the user manually clicks on it with the mouse.

What am I doing wrong? Why does this behavior occur? I know it has something to do with waiting for the executable to finish, because if I don't force the first program to wait everything is fine (other than it not waiting). I can circumvent the issue by calling the second program in the Load event of the form, but then I have to read the file a second time to catch the changes instead of reading it once, and it also looks bad because the form is being drawn really slowly while the second program is sitting there.

If anyone has any input, I'd appreciate it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3604

Answers (2)

Rtisatto
Rtisatto

Reputation: 785

There are another topic in this site about that, but I not got the link. This problem seems be a bug into .NET framework. The API below (VB.NET example) works for me in windows XP and 8.1. Don't tested in other versions of Windows.

<Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32")> _
Public Shared Function SetForegroundWindow(hwnd As IntPtr) As Integer
End Function

Private Sub Form_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    SetForegroundWindow(Handle)
End Sub

Upvotes: 1

Antagony
Antagony

Reputation: 1780

This isn't really an answer to why you're experiencing this behaviour, but a simple workaround would be to temporarily set the form's TopMost property to True in the load event. Then, depending on how intrusive you want that to be, you could either reset it under a short timer or wait for say the MouseEnter event to fire.

Upvotes: 3

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