window position on startup

you know how you first create the main window with CreateWindow and two of the params have to do with where the window is to be placed on the screen. well, whats your input on what you should do? should you give an immediate pixel value for that, shoudl you work with GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN) and SM_CYSCREEN or do you just use CW_USEDEFAULT and let windows decide?

right now i use CW_USEDEFAULT but i'm not really sure i like this way. mainly because the positioning on the screen seems sort of random.

what do you use?

thanks!

I use GetSystemMetrics and use some relation of that so that it is standard on all comps.

You could center you window on the desktop, but what I normally do (and this is pretty standard behaviour) is save the size and position of the window and open it back up to where the user had it the previous time.
Just handle the WM_SIZE and WM_MOVE messages and save the size and position of the window respectively, then when you exit the app, write it to an .ini file or the system registry. When starting the app read in the values and pass them to CreateWindowEx.

-Futura

that's a good idea. how could i possibly save this in the registry file? or would it be better to just write the values to that file? but would that be good to have an extra file for that alone? i guess i could also fit some other save-able options from the app also in that file, too.

thanks!

I prefer keeping a program's settings in an ini file because I don't like cluttering up the sys registry. But, as they say, that is what the registry is for. To use the Registry, look up the Win32 API functions RegOpenKey, RegCreateKey RegDeleteKey. I would, however just write to a file in your program's directory. Make the file something like this:

Code:

---

[my prog's setup]
left=529
top=120
width=540
height=231
add any other configuration & preferences here...

---

Then just read in the file, parse it & you have your info.

If you're gonna mess with the registry functions, make sure you know what you're doing !

there is a style

DS_CENTER

In MSVC you can select this in the resource editor.

okay, thanks all! i'm just going to use the file idea. seems to be best.

so thats what the registry is for? just for that sort of thing, or other functions/options?

thanks!

I see that many big commercial programs use registry for saving its configuration settings (for internal use and for windows-wide use). For instance, read

Quote:

---

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\App Paths\AcroRd32.exe

---

value "Path" and you will know where last installed version of AcrobatReader resides.
For your program it should be handy, but in general, big registry burdens system.