Thread: Creating own, focusable, control

I want to create an object on a window that accepts user input (keyboard & mouse), but is completely drawn by my own program and can take the focus.

Doing most of this seems quite easy - I can draw on the window directly with no problems, and get WM_KEYDOWN etc and mouse messages, but of course, since there's no actual control there, I can't shift the input focus to that part of the window. Since the window contains other controls (such as edit boxes) this makes it difficult for me to see whether I should be accepting the input for my control or not.

I could take a listview, listbox, etc and do complete custom drawing, but that seems overkill for the simple task I want.

The problem is that I have a number of edit boxes on my form, and Windows will not allow the focus to move out of these boxes because it assumes that there's nothing else that can accept input. So, in effect, once you click the mouse into one of these, I can't click back to my own "control".

I will have a look to see if I can handle tabbing myself (not sure how yet), but if I can't work it out, or it appears too complex, then I may just do a simple DIY window.