Here's a crazy idea, or is it???

[Pete]

I've been considering a separate but communicating popup routine in my WP project. It would allow a resize of the doc, without affecting the size of the popup. It  would also save me making a moving popup function. However, since this method shells to run an additional separate instance of the program, there is a bit of a lag factor on slower computers.

I could use Windows API to maintain focus, and even get rid of the top Windows border on the popup. Right now, I'm just fiddling with some things, beginning with appearance, which isn't too bad.

Note: This demo won't create any files on your system. It just references itself, via an error trap for an open the exe file for input with a  LOCK in place. That creates a trapped error 70, permission denied. This method is fine for this demo, but only allows the user to press the popup key once. An actual temp file method would be employed, to solve that situation, if I go forward with this concept. I've already done similar projects with network handling of shared files over multiple computers.

Now maybe there are some new QB64 commands I'm unaware of that can do something similar to this already?

Anyway, to get this to work, you have to save it as myprog22xyz.bas and let the QB64 IDE compile it into myprog22xyz.exe. If you fail to do so, no popup will occur when you press the F3 key.

Oh, the "Hello Heaven" message is just a joke. Although considering the time it might take me to put this all together, it might also be a prophecy.

Code: QB64: [Select]

1. ON ERROR GOTO handler
2. ff1% = FREEFILE
3. OPEN "myprog22xyz.exe" FOR INPUT SHARED AS #ff1%
4. LOCK #ff1%
5. _DELAY .5
6.  
7. SELECT CASE er1%
8.     CASE 0
9.         $RESIZE:ON
10.         WIDTH 120, 43
11.         COLOR 0, 7: CLS
12.         _DELAY .2
13.         _SCREENMOVE _MIDDLE
14.         _DELAY .2
15.         _RESIZE ON , _SMOOTH
16.         LOCATE 10, 54: PRINT "Hello Heaven!"
17.         DO
18.             _LIMIT 30
19.             b$ = INKEY$
20.             IF LEN(b$) THEN
21.                 SELECT CASE b$
22.                     CASE CHR$(27): UNLOCK #ff1%: SYSTEM
23.                     CASE CHR$(0) + CHR$(61)
24.                         IF NOT shell1% THEN
25.                             shell1% = -1
26.                             SHELL _HIDE _DONTWAIT "start myprog22xyz.exe"
27.                         END IF
28.                 END SELECT
29.             END IF
30.         LOOP
31.     CASE 70
32.         er1% = 0
33.         WIDTH 60, 6
34.         COLOR 15, 1: CLS
35.         _DELAY .2
36.         _SCREENMOVE _MIDDLE
37.         _DELAY .2
38.         LOCATE 3, 3: PRINT "Find: ";
39.         COLOR 7, 0
40.         PRINT SPACE$(50);
41.         LOCATE 3, 10: PRINT "It worked!";
42.         DO
43.             _LIMIT 30
44.         LOOP UNTIL LEN(INKEY$)
45.         SYSTEM
46.     CASE ELSE
47.         PRINT "Unexpected error, code ="; er1%: END
48. END SELECT
49.  
50. handler:
51. er1% = ERR
52. RESUME NEXT
53. END

Pete