Registering hot-keys for your Winform

27 Jun 2006 8:58 AM

Water Cooler v2

I want to register a hotkey for my WinForm so that when I hold the,
say, Alt+M keys, it minimizes. How do I do that?

27 Jun 2006 10:20 AM

Simon Verona

I found the easiest way is to create a menu item to do this and then link
the "hot key" to the menu item.

HTH
Simon

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"Water Cooler v2" <wtr_***@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1151398725.694494.211400@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>I want to register a hotkey for my WinForm so that when I hold the,
> say, Alt+M keys, it minimizes. How do I do that?
>

27 Jun 2006 10:36 AM

Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]

"Simon Verona" <nom***@nomail.zzz> schrieb:
>I found the easiest way is to create a menu item to do this and then link
> the "hot key" to the menu item.

ACK. Note that the menu item doesn't necessarily need to be visible.

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M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

27 Jun 2006 10:57 AM

Water Cooler v2

Thanks! That is a nice tip I will surely use in the future. For now,
I'll be using the Win32 API to register the hotkey that is system-wide
because this menu-item solution, I believe:

1. Will not be system-wide; and
2. Will not be able to restore the form once minimized.

But a great tip I never thought of, really. Thanks a lot.

Another related question:

I've seen examples that use RegisterHotKey API without a global atom
and some that do add a global atom for the key in the Global Atom
database. Would someone tell me whether it is absolutely necessary to
have a global atom for the hotkey? If not, what is the difference
between the two approaches.

28 Jun 2006 7:34 AM

M. Posseth

Look at Francesco`s article regrding this
http://www.dotnet2themax.com/ShowContent.aspx?ID=103cca7a-0323-47eb-b210-c2bb7075ba78

the attom thingy well he tells it here :

"you need to install the hotkey, which you do by calling the RegisterHotKey
API function: this function takes a unique id, and MSDN docs explain that you
should call GlobalAddAtom to get such an id. Besides, you must store this id
in a form variable, because you need it later, to unregister the class and
delete the global atom you created"

so someone using the RegisterHotKey API function without the use of a
doesn`t follow the MSDN rule for getting the unique id or doesn`t care about
a good cleanup routine ( or isn`t aware that he should call GlobalAddAtom to
get such an id )

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

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"Water Cooler v2" wrote:

> Thanks! That is a nice tip I will surely use in the future. For now,
> I'll be using the Win32 API to register the hotkey that is system-wide
> because this menu-item solution, I believe:
>
> 1. Will not be system-wide; and
> 2. Will not be able to restore the form once minimized.
>
> But a great tip I never thought of, really. Thanks a lot.
>
>
>
> Another related question:
>
> I've seen examples that use RegisterHotKey API without a global atom
> and some that do add a global atom for the key in the Global Atom
> database. Would someone tell me whether it is absolutely necessary to
> have a global atom for the hotkey? If not, what is the difference
> between the two approaches.
>
>