An Office 2003-like popup notifier

Nicolas Wälti

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23 Mar 2006CPOL1 min read

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A nice little control to help the user notice you're trying to tell him something...

Introduction

This is a simple project, a control that mimics the Microsoft® Outlook® 2003 mail alert.

Features

This control has several features. Among them, you'll find:

Progressive appearance - transparency

MSN Messenger like pop-ups (any size, color, etc.)

Another sample

This control is 100% drawn in the code, there is absolutely no other dependencies than System.Drawing and System.Windows.Forms.

You can include a ContextMenuStrip when clicking on the "down arrow" button.

Using the code

The controls is made of two basic classes:

A form (the part that will actually show up).
A class that contains all the properties that will be includable on forms.

The class contains two timers, one used for the appearing/disappearing animation, the other (configurable) is used to define how much time the popup is shown before it disappears.

This is how the form is actually shown:

fPopup.Size = Size
fPopup.Opacity = 0
fPopup.Location = _
  New Point(Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Right_
   - fPopup.Size.Width - 1, _
   Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Bottom)
fPopup.Show()

The form is does the drawing in the Paint event.

I'm using these functions to obtain a color that is similar but lighter/darker. There might exist another method.

Private Function GetDarkerColor(ByVal Color As Color) As Color
    Dim clNew As Color
    clNew = Drawing.Color.FromArgb(255, DedValueMin0(CInt(Color.R), _
            Parent.GradientPower), DedValueMin0(CInt(Color.G), _
            Parent.GradientPower), DedValueMin0(CInt(Color.B), _
            Parent.GradientPower))
    Return clNew
End Function

And to avoid flickering...

Me.SetStyle(ControlStyles.OptimizedDoubleBuffer, True)
Me.SetStyle(ControlStyles.ResizeRedraw, True)
Me.SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, True)

Points of Interest

None really, it's nice, it's fun, it's colorful... that's it :)

History

March 2006 - V 1.0.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Written By

Nicolas Wälti

Software Developer (Senior)

Switzerland

This member has not yet provided a Biography. Assume it's interesting and varied, and probably something to do with programming.

Imports System.ComponentModel Public Class PopupNotifierCollection Inherits CollectionBase Sub New() End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnSet(ByVal index As Integer, ByVal oldValue As Object, ByVal newValue As Object) MyBase.OnSet(index, oldValue, newValue) End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnInsert(ByVal index As Integer, ByVal value As Object) MyBase.OnInsert(index, value) End Sub Default ReadOnly Property Item(ByVal Index As Integer) As PopupNotifier Get Return DirectCast(List(Index), PopupNotifier) End Get End Property Public Function Add(ByVal value As PopupNotifier) As PopupNotifier List.Add(value) Return value End Function Public Function Contains(ByVal value As PopupNotifier) As Boolean Return List.Contains(value) End Function Public Sub Remove(ByVal value As PopupNotifier) List.Remove(value) End Sub Public Function IndexOf(ByVal value As PopupNotifier) As Integer Return List.IndexOf(value) End Function Public Shadows Sub Clear() MyBase.Clear() End Sub Sub Popup() For Each Item As PopupNotifier In List Item.Popup(List.IndexOf(Item)) Next Clear() End Sub End Class

Dim colPopupNotifiers As New PopupNotifierCollection Dim pnNotifier1 As PopupNotifier = New PopupNotifier Dim pnNotifier2 As PopupNotifier = New PopupNotifier colPopupNotifiers.Add(pnNotifier1) colPopupNotifiers.Add(pnNotifier2) colPopupNotifiers.Popup()

Sub Popup(Optional ByVal Number As Integer = 0) tmWait.Interval = ShowDelay fPopup.Size = Size fPopup.Opacity = 0 iOffset = (Number * fPopup.Size.Height) + (Number * 5) fPopup.Location = New Point(Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Right - fPopup.Size.Width - 1, Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Bottom - iOffset) fPopup.Show() tmAnimation.Start() End Sub

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