Win32: Why does WS_CHILD not get focus?

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Doing direct Win32 API programming... before I post a bunch of code, I'll just ask the question and see if anyone has any quick ideas:

I create my main WS_OVERLAPPED window. During the WM_CREATE message, I create a WS_CHILD window. To differentiate between the two, I made the background color of the main window the APPWORKSPACE color and the child window simply white. Everything displays correctly. However, all of the WM_KEYUP and WM_KEYDOWN messages come in with the main window handle.

This problem goes away immediately if I change WM_CHILD to WM_POPUP. Of course, that doesn't really help since I specifically want a child window. But I think it at least shows that the general setup of my message processing is OK. I thought maybe it had something to do with creating the child during the parent WM_CREATE process, but I'm not sure what. I tried clicking in the child area to force focus, but the key messages are still dispatched to the parent.

Can anyone think of a reason that WS_CHILD would not receive WM_KEY* messages?

Posted 9-Aug-11 16:46pm

Xpnctoc

Updated 13-Dec-16 0:48am

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5 solutions

Solution 1

Call SetFocus(hChild); on WM_ACTIVATE or/and WM_MOUSEACTIVATE of the parent window.
Regards.

Posted 9-Aug-11 17:09pm

mbue

Solution 2

if you are looking for focus ON pressing tab two thing needed to be done
1. set style WM_TABSTOP
2. Use IsDialogMessage function to operate tabstop. here is an example:

C++

while(GetMessage(&msg,0,0,0))
{
 if(!IsDialogMessage(hwnd,&msg))
 {
  ..
  ..
  
 }
}

Posted 9-Aug-11 17:25pm

Mohibur Rashid

Solution 4

Because the main window gets the focus automatically on creation. It is then up to your application to set the focus to whatever child windows it chooses. In the case of a popup or dialog, that is treated the same as a main window.

Posted 10-Aug-11 3:58am

Richard MacCutchan

Solution 5

If you use the WM_MOUSEMOVE , check current hWnd == old hWnd,
when current handle was change, set SetFourcs() with current hWnd.

-----

static HWND _CurHWnd = nullptr, _ZenHWnd = nullptr;

case WM_MOUSEMOVE:
_CurHWnd = hWnd;
if (_CurHWnd != _ZenHWnd) {
::SetFocus(_CurHWnd);
_ZenHWnd = _CurHWnd;
}

Posted 13-Dec-16 0:48am

Member 12901989

Comments

Richard MacCutchan 13-Dec-16 12:08pm

This question was opened and answered 5 years ago! Why are you posting here?

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Xpnctoc · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-10T03:29:00

Solution 3

Johny10151981: Interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

Mbue: WM_ACTIVATE had no effect, but setting the child focus from the parent WM_SETFOCUS message does seem to work for me:

HWND child = GetFirstChild( mHwnd );
if( child )
{
    SetFocus( child );
}

Thanks for the responses.

Posted 10-Aug-11 3:29am

Xpnctoc

Updated 10-Aug-11 3:31am

v2

Comments

mbue 10-Aug-11 11:01am

I said:


LRESULT WndProc(HWND h,int m,WPARAM w,LPARAM l)
{
  switch(m)
  {
    case WM_ACTIVATE:
      if(w) SetFocus(GetWindow(h,GW_HWNDCHILD));
    return 0;
  }
  return DefWindowProc(h,m,w,l);
}

Regards.