Thread: How to avoid keyboard focus being stolen by child window?

I made a toolbox window that just shows a grid of normal buttons. I'd initially made it a non-overlapped (= without title bar and resizing) sibling window with code in the WM_SIZE and WM_MOVE messages to force it into the top left corner of the main window but it caused issues with minimization so I've made it a non-overlapped child window.

Now the problem I'm having is that whenever I press the control key it's permanently stealing keyboard focus from the main window and unselected the selected tool button. Do you know of any way to avoid a child window from getting keyboard messages?

Also do you know of any way of detecting Ctlr+<alphabet> keypresses other than matching with any of the first 32 characters? (Ex: I look for with character 26 for detecting Ctrl+Z)

NB: This only happens after I've changed the initial selected button in toolbox. Before that all keyboard messages are going to the main window and pressing control also doesent affect toolbox then.

You could register a keyboard hook, and only respond to the keypresses when your windows are in focus.

Yarin, I've no idea what a keyboard hook is....but thanks still.

grumpy, I unfortunately probably wasnt detecting BN_UNPUSHED messages as I tried adding a WM_SETFOCUS call to parent window from it's handler without any avail. But I've made it work now by adding an SetFocus(GetParent(hwnd)) call to the WM_COMMAND handler of the toolbox. Both issues are solved now. Thanks a ton to you too!

btw I tried replacing the SetFocus() call by SendMessage(GetParent(hwnd),WM_SETFOCUS,(WPARAM)hw nd,0); where hwnd is toolbox window handle. This doesent seem to work do you by any chance know the reason?

Ahh yes so sorry. I added a WM_KILLFOCUS message before the WM_SETFOCUS and it works correctly.