CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.net
Kashish Arora
Kashish Arora

Reputation: 908

How to handle user clicking mouse outside a form?

I am making a project in VB.NET in which we track the cursor's location anywhere on the screen.
In Timer 1_ Tick Event, I have set frequency as 1 millisecond so that it can track the location more frequently. The following is the code I have inserted in Timer1_Tick event

    Me.Cursor = New Cursor(Cursor.Current.Handle)
    Label4.Text = Cursor.Position.X
    Label5.Text = Cursor.Position.Y

I want the user to click and drag outside the form to get dimensions of the selected area in pixels. Can anyone please help how to control mouse clicking outside a form?

Thanks in Advance!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2140

Answers (1)

Mark Hall
Mark Hall

Reputation: 54532

It sounds like you are trying to get an area from outside of your application, you could try using a Global Hook, such as is available from this CodePlex Project.

This is a simple example that is responding to the MouseDown and MouseUp events creating a Rectangle then printing the results to a TextBox it should give you an idea how to proceed.

Imports MouseKeyboardActivityMonitor
Imports MouseKeyboardActivityMonitor.WinApi

Public Class Form1
    Private m_MouseHookManager As MouseHookListener
    Dim tempPoint As Point

    Public Sub New()

        ' This call is required by the designer.
        InitializeComponent()

        ' Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call.
        m_MouseHookManager = New MouseHookListener(New GlobalHooker)
        m_MouseHookManager.Enabled = True
        AddHandler m_MouseHookManager.MouseUp, AddressOf HookManager_MouseUp
        AddHandler m_MouseHookManager.MouseDown, AddressOf HookManager_MouseDown
        TextBox1.ScrollBars = ScrollBars.Vertical
    End Sub

    Private Sub HookManager_MouseUp(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs)
        Dim r As Rectangle = New Rectangle(tempPoint.X, tempPoint.Y, e.X - tempPoint.X, e.Y - tempPoint.Y)
        TextBox1.Text += "Left: " & r.Left & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text += "Right: " & r.Top & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text += "Width: " & r.Width & vbCrLf
        TextBox1.Text += "Height: " & r.Height & vbCrLf
        tempPoint = Point.Empty
    End Sub


    Private Sub HookManager_MouseDown(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs)
        tempPoint = e.Location
    End Sub
End Class

Upvotes: 2

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