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We have several control dialogs that are derived from CExtControlBar. The problem is that if these dialogs are floating instead of docked, they show up in the list of windows given by alt-tab in vista (or by using the "alt-tab replacement" powertoy - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx).

The usual method of solving this is to give the control bar the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW extended style, but that doesn’t work because in CExtDockMiniFrameWnd::OnWindowPosChanging the extended styles defined by:

#define __REMOVED_STYLES_EXTENDED (WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW|WS_EX_STATICEDGE|WS_EX_WINDOWEDGE|WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME)

are always removed from the window.

Is there a reason that WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW has to be removed, or some other way to remove a toolwindow from the alt-tab list?

I would appreciate any help you could give.

Please put these two small modifications into the ../Prof-UIS/Src/ExtMiniDockFrameWnd.cpp file:

1) Find the following lines near beginning of this file:

#define __REMOVED_STYLES_EXTENDED \
      (WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW|WS_EX_STATICEDGE|WS_EX_WINDOWEDGE|WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME)

and replace with the following lines:

#define __REMOVED_STYLES_EXTENDED \
      (WS_EX_STATICEDGE|WS_EX_WINDOWEDGE|WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME)

2) Update the source code of the CExtMiniDockFrameWnd::PreCreateWindow() method:

BOOL CExtMiniDockFrameWnd::PreCreateWindow( CREATESTRUCT & cs ) 
{
      if( ! CMiniDockFrameWnd::PreCreateWindow(cs) )
      {
            ASSERT( FALSE );
            return FALSE;
      }
      cs.dwExStyle |= WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW; // THIS LINE WAS ADDED
      cs.dwExStyle &= ~(WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL|WS_EX_RTLREADING);
      return TRUE;
}

Here is the URL for the Windows XP task switcher power-toy:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/TaskswitchPowertoySetup.exe


Thanks

Could you provide us with the exact download link for this software. Although this product is for Windows XP and you have problems with it on Windows Vista, we can make Prof-UIS compatible with it. The tool window style was removed because this was needed for old control bar implementations in Prof-UIS. We can avoid removing this style at present.