Comments on Yort on .NET: On-screen Keyboards

Thanks for pointing that out, Nino !

2012-01-26T16:06:56.794+13:00

Thanks for pointing that out, Nino !

Change the '&' for a '|' in c...

2012-01-21T06:07:54.844+13:00

Change the '&' for a '|' in
createParams.ExStyle = createParams.ExStyle & WS_EX_NOACTIVATE;

and everything will go smooth...

Great Solution indeed, Thanks!

Hi Anonymous, That control does look very cool, e...

2012-01-13T14:59:21.473+13:00

Hi Anonymous,

That control does look very cool, especially if you are looking for a Metro styled keyboard.

Found this cool control for winforms

Hi Arjit, To prevent the keyboard getting focus w...

2011-08-18T08:42:03.386+12:00

Hi Arjit,

To prevent the keyboard getting focus when clicked, the two key points are;

1. Override the forms wndproc event and ignore the WM_MouseActivate message (as shown in the article).

2. DO NOT use a control that can receive focus for the keyboard or indivudal buttons on the keyboard. For example, you can't use a normal .Net button control to represent a keyboard button, because when it's clicked it will receive focus which will also cause the form to become focused. Instead, use a label, picturebox or other control that can never receive keyboard focus.

Can you confirm you've followed that advice ? If you have, then I have no idea why it would not work. Which OS are you using ?

Hi Yort, I am following exactly the same method a...

2011-08-17T21:08:51.695+12:00

Hi Yort,

I am following exactly the same method as you specified for my windows form application. I have my Keyboard in a host form. And I am using notepad to give input to. But the problem is I am getting focus to keyboard form while pressing keys. I am unable to give input to notepad for any key. I am using http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/touchscreenkeyboard.aspx

Waiting for your reply, thank you.

Hi Yort, I really appreciate your helps. I use th...

2011-08-10T04:35:22.272+12:00

Hi Yort,
I really appreciate your helps. I use the process.start to start up the keyboard appl inside the notepad appl. I gonna try out your suggestion.
Thanks again for your times and helps.
Bon

Hi Bon, I'm sorry, but I'm really confuse...

2011-08-09T22:54:28.894+12:00

Hi Bon,

I'm sorry, but I'm really confused and unsure how to help you. If the keyboard isn't getting focus (and it shouldn't be), then the notepad should remain focused (the keyboard cursor should remain in the notepad text field, blinking). I don't know why that isn't working for you.

I doubt just trying to launch the keyboard first is a good plan, but if it works I guess it could at least be a short term solution for you. I'm not sure how you're launching the two windows, you make it sound like they are seperate applications that you are starting using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start. If that's the case you could try calling WaitForInputIdle on the Process object returned by the start method, before starting the notepad. I'm not sure if that will work, but it's the only thing I can think of short of writing code to check for the notepad window and looping until it turns up (and that will be very ugly to do, and not a good plan).

Yes, you're right. My bad. I should state it ...

2011-08-09T11:30:40.515+12:00

Yes, you're right. My bad. I should state it clearly. I meant neither the Notepad nor Keyboard got focus. The way I did is I launch the keyboard inside the notepad Load function (It's part of the requirement to launch both applications together). So I saw the notepad was up first with cursor blinking in text field. Then when the keyboard came up, the cursor on text field was disappeard and the notepad wasn't focused anymore (the keyboard isn't focus either), until I clicked on the notepad to make it active again.

If I don't click on the notepad to make it active window, sending the "return" or "space" keys from keyboard will make the keyboard hang.

So may be when I run the notepad, I need to bring up the keyboard first before launching the notepad. I set to load the keyboard at the first line of the notepad Load function, but the notepad still gets loaded first before the keyboard.

Inside the Notepad program, how do I bring up the keyboard first before bringing up the notepad?

Thanks,
Bon

That's really weird, Bon. If you've follow...

2011-08-09T09:21:10.523+12:00

That's really weird, Bon. If you've followed the instructions in my article your keyboard shouldn't be getting focus ever.

You intercept the wm_mouseactivate message to prevent the keyboard getting focus when clicked, and you either set the ShowWithoutActivation property to false in the keyboard form's constructor or override CreateParams property and return a value including the WS_EX_NOACTIVATE bit as shown in my post.

You also need to make sure whatever control you are using for buttons is NOT focusable, i.e use a label.

Have you done these things ?

If you have, then the form should NOT get focus either when shown, or when clicked.

Hi Yort, Thanks for your helps. I believe I send ...

2011-08-09T05:33:09.018+12:00

Hi Yort,
Thanks for your helps. I believe I send the "Carriage Enter" and "Space" keys the same as I send other keys. But I will look into more as your suggestion if I've done anything odd.

In my notepad program, I set the focus on it (using txtNotepad.focus()), but when I launch the keyboard, the focus is taken away from the notepad and put on the keyboard instead, and then the problem begins when I send one of the two keys above. Could you tell me how to set the focus always on the Notepad even after launching the keyboard so that the notepad is always the active window, therefore the keys can always send to the notepad?

I really appreciate your times helping me. Thanks.
Bon

SendKeys is often used in situations where it real...

2011-08-05T21:10:56.045+12:00

SendKeys is often used in situations where it really shouldn't be, so I can understand why your boss wants to avoid it, but all it really does is post window messages to a given window saying a key was pressed. For an on screen keyboard, that's exactly what you want it to do.

I really don't understand why the enter key would be causing an issue though. I haven't seen that on any of my own systems.

Do you perhaps have some code (or a button a 'default button') on the keyboard window that handles enter ? If that was the case then you might be sending enter to yourself, which might then act as if enter was pressed again, which would call sendkeys again and put you into a sort of recursive loop with no end. That's really the only issue I can think of.

Hi Yort, Thanks a lot for your response and sugges...

2011-08-05T21:03:02.670+12:00

Hi Yort,
Thanks a lot for your response and suggestion. I did try the send method too, but the key is still blinking and make the keyboard hang. I put these two keys in the try catch block but doesn't work since they are valid key codes. I only hope that my boss doesn't find out this deadly bug or I'll be in very big trouble since I don't know how to fix it :( He told me not to use sendkeys at the beginning, but I told him that sendkeys is the way to go for an on-screen keyboard...
Thanks again for your helps.
Bon

Hi Bon, That is an odd symptom, no I haven't ...

2011-08-05T20:24:10.719+12:00

Hi Bon,

That is an odd symptom, no I haven't seen it before and nor do I have any idea how to fix it.

My only suggestion would be to try using the Send method of SendKeys rather than SendWait. I haven't found SendWait to be necessary myself, and you should get better performance using just Send.

Hi Yort, Great post! My on-screen keyboard now wor...

2011-08-04T20:34:32.304+12:00

Hi Yort,
Great post! My on-screen keyboard now works with any active input file! However, when I test the keyboard by itself without clicked to focus on an active window (e.g. notepad), pressing the "Carriage Enter" or "Space" then makes the keyboard hang (problem doesn't exist with other keys though. I use sendkeys.SendWait to send a key.) Have you seen this kind of problem? Any idea to make the keyboard not to hang? Please help. Thanks a lot.

Bon

Glad I could help, good luck with your project.

2011-08-02T16:04:56.605+12:00

Glad I could help, good luck with your project.

Hi Yort, Thanks for the great tips. I'm doing...

2011-08-02T04:59:52.939+12:00

Hi Yort,
Thanks for the great tips. I'm doing the hide and show like you suggested. That should do it. Thanks for all your helps.
Chi

Hi Chi, You could try setting TopMost to true on ...

2011-07-31T09:52:55.140+12:00

Hi Chi,

You could try setting TopMost to true on the notepad too, and calling the BringToFront method on the window inside it's Activate event, that might work but I'm not sure.

What I really suggest you do is revisit your design. Perhaps the notepad should be docked to the top two thirds of the screen and the keyboard shown at the bottom third (like most modern smart phones do), and the user can't move them, that whay they never overlap. Or alternatively, you could put a button on the keyboard to hide it, and then show it whenever the notepad edit field gets focus, and/or put a button on the notepad to show the keyboard too.

Hi Yort, Thanks again for the tip. I'm so new...

2011-07-29T11:31:57.056+12:00

Hi Yort,
Thanks again for the tip. I'm so new to vb .net (3 weeks learning till now). That's why I need helps from the professional like you. Thanks!

One more question if you don't mind. Since I have to use touch screen for all applications, my notepad has all buttons laid at the bottom instead of using menu strip. How can I make the notepad back to the top when I need to use its buttons to save, exit etc (since now those buttons covered by the keyboard)? I also set the notepad to topmost, but it wasn't back to topmost when I click on it.

Thanks for all your helps, Yort.

Chi

Hi Chi, Thanks for the comment, I'm glad the ...

2011-07-28T13:54:13.933+12:00

Hi Chi,

Thanks for the comment, I'm glad the post helped you.

If you're working in WinForms (2.0 or later) then the form the keyboard is on should have a property called 'TopMost'.

Simply set that to true in either the designer, or the constructor of your form, and that window should stay on top of other windows.

If you're in WPF then I'm not sure of the exact method to do this, but there should be a way (probably a similar mechnaism, perhaps just a property with a different name). A Google search should help figure it out.

- Yort

Hi Yort, Great post! I followed the steps and was...

2011-07-28T13:03:54.861+12:00

Hi Yort,
Great post! I followed the steps and was able to send key from a on-screen keyboard to a notepad!

I noticed that the notepad then was always on top of and cover up the keyboard.

Since I have to run my program on a small screen, I need the keyboard to be on top of the notepad so that I can press the key (just like the on-screen keyboard of an ipad). Is there a way to do that? I really appreciate your times and helps.

Thanks,
Chi

This is great help. It saved my job and therefore...

2011-07-23T11:45:39.152+12:00

This is great help. It saved my job and therefore my life!
Thanks!

Hi, Setting the form border style to none should ...

2011-06-08T23:09:54.627+12:00

Hi,

Setting the form border style to none should do it, but also try the following;

1. Remove the title text for the form.
2. Set the properties for min/max buttons and the 'controlbox' to false.

I think if you do that and set the form border style to none, there should be no 'chrome' at all for the window.

Hello! Thats a fabulous keyboard,Kudos! Well,i edi...

2011-06-08T21:19:01.055+12:00

Hello!
Thats a fabulous keyboard,Kudos!
Well,i edited some parts in the demo keyboard,where i put animation effect of sliding when opening or closing the keyboard,and its working fine.
The problem i am facing is in removing the border of the keyboard(border and title bar), i have tried removing it by making the FormBorderStyle to None(of Form1 in demo keyboard),but still the border appears!
Am using Windows XP and Visual Studio 2005.
Can you please help me out! Thanks in advance. :)

Hi Anonymous, Sorry you're having a performan...

2011-02-03T11:54:04.561+13:00

Hi Anonymous,

Sorry you're having a performance problem. Not sure why it would be any different in VB.Net than C# since it's the the same framework/api calls etc. under the hood.

Specifically which bit is slow, and what VB code are you referring to (my samples are all C# and I haven't written any VB that I'm aware of). The VB code posted by Jeremey in the previous comments doesn't look like it should cause any significant performance hit.