QA: How to create Today-friendly dialog based application?

Vassili Philippov (vasja@spbteam.com), July 01, 2001.

Question

I have created a dialog based application. It works ok. But when I click Today item in Start menu my program is shown instead of Today screen. How can I fix it?

Answer

This is because Today application is like a desktop on PC. When a dialog has no parent a Today window is considered as a parent window. This behaviour is necessary to get access to popup messages. For example when message about low battery is shown and you switch to another application. The onl way to access this popup message window is to call Today program. But such behaviour is not necessary for windows that could be accessible from menu.

To fix it you should change dialog's WS_POPUP style to WS_OVERLAPPED.

Related resources:

• http://www.pocketpcdn.com/sections/today.html
  Section: Today
• http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/dialog_graceful_shutdown.html
  QA: QA: How to implement "graceful shutdown" in application with modal dialog boxes?
• http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/developer/technicalarticles/todayapi.asp
  Article: Using the Today API
• http://www.cshonline.com/pocketpc/#ProgrammingAdvice
  Article: Today Screen Programming Advice
• http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5461a.asp#100
  Article: Writing a Custom Today Screen Item
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnroad/html/road09122001.asp
  Article: Two for the Road: Today the Pocket PC, Tomorrow the World!