Detecting an application being put in the background

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I'd like to be able to do some GUI manipulations when some other application goes to the front (by alt-tabbing, clicking in a foreign window, clicking in the task bar, etc). How do I detect that my application has just been navigated away from?

My desired activity at that point involves showing/hiding multiple windows and I don't want to use the OnDeactivate override because if I hide on Deactivate and show on Activate, I get a flicker if the user is moving from one application window to another.

The "Activation" part is fine. I show my subwindows whenever a main window receives an OnActivated.

If there were an Application.OnActivate(...) / OnDeactivate(...) pair, I wouldn't be posting here. I could just listen in on the Application.OnDeactivate() and hide my child windows, and restore their visibility when Application.OnActivate() would get triggered.

Posted 23-Apr-10 9:03am

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Alan N · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-23T10:09:00

Solution 1

Hi,
I haven't thought this through in any detail but can you use a combination of the Deactivate event and the Form.ActiveForm property.

C#

private void AnyForm_Deactivate(object sender, EventArgs e) {
  if (this.ActiveForm == null) {
    // no active forms
  }
}

Alan.

Posted 23-Apr-10 10:09am

Alan N