Re: Invisible Window
Hi Joe,
I guess if it's intended to be malicious you have a case. We have a program
(a typical .EXE) that runs in this fashion to send data to our server (gets
recorded to CD or DVD) from a local user's system. Since it runs as the
user (not a service) it gets all the permissions the logged in user gets.
It runs while the server needs to get the data for the order then gracefully
stops running and the user is never bothered with even knowing anything is
going on. The benefit is the user does not need to share their local
information for the server to retrieve it and the user does not have to wait
for an "image" to be created before they continue with doing other things
with our program.
I'm not sure our use compares with playing sound bytes from King of the
Hill, but it's a handy technique none the less :o)
Tom
"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@flounder.com> wrote in message
news:heig6317ioab8hnkf4tkc1mvpirmv7gmuj@4ax.com...
The attitude that this is designed to confuse naive users says it all:
it's malware.
The idea is to play .wav files of Boomhauer from King of the Hill, but
the computer novices will look for the application on the task bar at
the bottom, but nothing will be displayed there.
joe
On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 07:48:39 -0700, "Tom Serface"
<tom.nospam@camaswood.com> wrote:
I'm not sure I'd call it malware, but if I wanted to do an "invisible"
program I'd probably make it a service. That way the service manager
could
be used to start and stop it gracefully.
Tom
"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@flounder.com> wrote in message
news:455g639l4mq9kq5i7nkpfg2rpf0cv0ru19@4ax.com...
You're a bit confused here. OnPaint only draws the contents of the
client
area, so if you
have anything in the client area, you would need to draw it there (where
would you expect
to draw it?) But this does not deal with the nonclient area, which is
going to paint
itself anyway. If the window is invisible, what difference does OnPaint
make anyway?
Requiring Task Manager to terminate a task is somewhere between utterly
tasteless and
outright user-hostile. It fundamentally sucks, and you should not
consider this a viable
solution.
Cute programs like this fall into the category of "malware", and it
would
be irresponsible
to encourage their construction.
You can create an app that has a tray icon, and is otherwise not
displayed. The system
menu in the tray icon would let you kill it gracefully.
joe
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@flounder.com
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm