Balloon Tips Galore! - CodeProject

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Introduction

This article introduces creating Balloon Tooltips, using available standard APIs. Balloon Tooltips can be very useful sometimes, however if used improperly can be painful for the user. Simply put, the code creates different types of balloon Tooltips. To use this, download the code, and choose the class you want to add in your project. Copy it over to your solution and you are ready to go. Have a look at the code behind the forms (Form1, Form2, Form3) in order to use it. The aim here was to keep the code as simple and modular as possible.

There are quite a few excellent articles on Code Project explaining how to create BalloonTips. Some even create them from scratch and are probably more feature rich. While I found these articles very informative, I also felt the need to use the original tips which come with Windows XP. The result is this simple API based project. Most of the code is based on this MSDN article.

I have omitted a notification kind of Tooltip or a Task Tray kind of balloon tip, just because there is already a good example on Code Project.

Using the code

All classes contain explanatory doc comments where necessary. Also code has been provided in both VB and C# to help ease of usage. The solution has been created in VS. NET 2003, hence may not be usable from VS. NET 2002, However the source code shouldn't be a problem.

HoverBalloon: Instead of showing a Tooltip over a control, a balloon tip can be shown over the control. Use this in cases where you want to attract the user's attention to detail. Use this sparingly in your application, so that user doesn't end up seeing a festival of balloons scattered over the form.

MessageBalloon: Has more control over the display of the balloon. The stem, location of the balloon can be changed with this class. This can be shown and hidden at will. Use this whenever you need a non-modal message box.

EditBalloon: Notice how a balloon comes up while entering the password in a edit control, if the CAPS lock is pressed accidentally ? It just reminds the user, but doesn't stop the process. Use this class as a reminder to the user while entering key edit fields.

If using VS. NET 2002 then a manifest file needs to be added to the directory in which the binary resides. (Find one in the 'bin' directory of download). If using VS. NET 2003 then Application.EnableVisualStyles() needs to be called before any form is loaded.

Enjoy the code, any feedback is appreciated.

Points

If the user has disabled BalloonTips in the registry then this probably wont work. This hasn't been tested on operating systems other than XP, so probably it won't work there.

Future Improvements

Provide designer support similar to the Tooltip control, by deriving from System.ComponentModel.Component class, similar to the System.Windows.Forms.ToolTip class at design time.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

ramshri

Web Developer

United States

Member

Ramesh is very much into Microsoft technologies, and silently marvels at the power of Windows SDK.
He juggles his time between his family, work and his motorcycle.

Find this and other code from THE source code repository at
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How to do it for richtextbox?

Priyank Bolia

9:29 10 Apr '08

How to do it for richtextbox, rather than normal textbox. http://www.priyank.co.in/
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Help with edit tooltip

rageit

19:22 15 Jul '07

This is a good control.
However, I need to show the tooltip when user enters invalid data in a control. The best option for me would be edit tooltip. But when the control's validating event is cancelled, other controls are still working. Note that I have placed my control in a tab page. Its buttons are unexpectedly firing their events, but the tab pages and the form's close button are not working which is a desired behavior.
Any clue!

Edit ToolTip Appears and dissapears

Carl Ja

13:52 23 May '07

I am using the a command button to trigger the show method of the edit tool tip. However the tooltip quickly appears and dissapears. However, if i invoke the CommandButtun_Click even from the main menu the tooltip stays. Any ideas?
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Re: Edit ToolTip Appears and dissapears

Carl Ja

16:28 23 May '07

I also notice it does't work with other controls such as combobox and datepicker.
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HOW TO ADD CUSTOM ICON

Nicola Costantini

6:10 12 Mar '07

Great Stuff Man!!! Here a new feature for you:;P

Since Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and later you can add a custom Icon. In this way:

Icon should be 16 x 16 ....

CLIENT:
mTip.Icon = this.Resourcer.LoadIcon("_1616").Handle

COMPONENT:

private IntPtr mIcon;

public IntPtr Icon
{
get { return mIcon; }
set { mIcon = value; }
}

SendMessage(
mTool.Handle, TTM_SETTITLE,
(int)mIcon, ptrTitle);

Cheers to the Community

Nicola

Missing feature?

petemaverick

8:29 11 Feb '07

Hi, It is possible to show the balloon message over a determinate character inside a richtextbox? Thanks!
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balloon becomes orphan

Harm Salomons

7:38 25 Oct '06

When you click twice on "Message Balloon"/"Show Tip" the tip does not get closed after clicking "Hide Tip", even the close button on the tip does not work any more... A comparable problem occurs when you click "Hide Tip" without ever having clicked "Show Tip". H. Salomons
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Timeout option

kikhan_21

4:42 15 Jun '06

Has someone implemented a timeout option .... like I want the balloon to close after 5 seconds. any tip/url?
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Re: Timeout option

JesusAbizanda

0:35 23 Jun '06

Easy! Add this code in the balloon you want to auto-close:



private System.Windows.Forms.Timer timerToClose;

 

        public MessageBalloon()

        {

            ...

            this.timerToClose = new Timer();

            this.timerToClose.Interval = 5000; //Interval (ms)

            this.timerToClose.Tick += new System.EventHandler(this.timerToClose_Tick);

            this.timerToClose.Enabled = true;

        }

 

        private void timerToClose_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

        {

            this.Hide();

            this.timerToClose.Enabled = false;

        }

Quite simple, isn't it? Wink | ;)

Re: Timeout option

sgennette

8:53 9 Apr '09

I tried using the code you gave but it didn't work.

Here's what I found that did work for setting the ballon duration to 10 seconds:

public const int TTM_SETDELAYTIME = (WM_USER + 3);
public const int TTDT_AUTOPOP = 2;

[DllImport("User32", EntryPoint = "SendMessageA", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern int SendMessage(
IntPtr hWnd,
int Msg,
long wParam,
long lParam);

SendMessage(
m_tool.Handle,
TTM_SETDELAYTIME,
TTDT_AUTOPOP, 10000);

problem with OpenFIleDialog, SaveFileDialog and FolderBrowseDialog

kikhan_21

3:07 31 May '06

I am using DotNet v1.1. there seems to be strange problem with OpenFIleDialog, SaveFileDialog and FolderBrowseDialog. When I show a ballon tooltip and one of the dialog is also displayed, a strange NullReferenceException creeps in. I have tried to hide and dispose the ballon tooltip before opening the dialog. Any suggestions? -Kashif
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Re: problem with OpenFIleDialog, SaveFileDialog and FolderBrowseDialog

marantz

23:45 10 Jul '07

I had exactly the same problem, i've identified the problem to be in the SetToolTip() method ---> SendMessage( m_tool.Handle, TTM_ADDTOOL, 0, ptrStruct); NULL REFERENCE EXCEPTION !! Can anyone figure it out ??
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Directly copied from MSDN bugs and all

Mach005

13:32 12 May '06

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/pinvoke.asp[^] This article's code is directly copied from the above MSDN article line for line. Event the bugs in Marshal.StructureToPtr are copied as is. -- modified at 19:32 Friday 12th May, 2006
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Re: Directly copied from MSDN bugs and all

ramshri

11:36 13 May '06

Please look at the dates posted. It looks like MSDN has copied the code from this article! I posted this in Sept 2003 and the MSDN article is from March 2006. Having said that I do acknowledge there are bugs in the article and that I havent been able to getting to fix them. I appreciate the community effort in fixing them. Thank you everybody.
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AccessViolationException: Bug in FMSEditTip.cs

Mach005

13:11 10 May '06

There is a bug in the Show method of the EditBalloon class. This causes an intermitent AccessViolaitonException under the .NET Framework 2.0.

The offending lines are:

IntPtr ptrStruct = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(Marshal.SizeOf(ebt));
Marshal.StructureToPtr(ebt, ptrStruct, true);

The second line should be:
Marshal.StructureToPtr(ebt, ptrStruct, false);

You cannot instruct Marshal.StructureToPtr to delete the previously used buffer, since the buffer has not been previously used. The line before this line allocates a new buffer, which contains unpredictable data. This causes the AccessViolationException to occur intermitently.

From MSDN:

If the fDeleteOld parameter is true, the buffer originally pointed to by ptr is deleted with the appropriate delete API on the embedded pointer, but the buffer must contain valid data.

The important part of that is "but the buffer must contain valid data" - you cannot delete an uninitialized buffer.

Re: AccessViolationException: Bug in FMSEditTip.cs

jose.mira

3:44 1 Oct '08

I'm using this component in an application and all went fine until I tried using the application in Windows Vista, where the application opened fine but, after a while, stopped working (never in the same place of the execution stack).
After a few hours of debugging I came back to the component's page in Code Project and began looking through the messages until I found this one. I corrected de component's source code and the application no longer stopped working in Windows Vista.
Thanks for the tip.

How can the EditBallon be hidden?

Kelraad

2:53 14 Feb '06

How can i hide the EditBalloon? I want to use this in some sort of advanced ErrorProvider...because i don't like the one in .NET, you have to hover the mouse over the small icon of the provider. So I show the tooltip when there is an error and hide the tooltip if the control was validated. Thank you, K -- modified at 8:54 Tuesday 14th February, 2006
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Re: How can the EditBallon be hidden?

Kelraad

3:18 14 Feb '06

I got it... I'll use SendMessage with EM_HIDEBALLOONTIP...
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How to enable balloon on XP

riscy

20:23 19 Dec '05

It does not seem to work on XP The code complies okay...but seem to be not enabled. Any suggestion?. Electronic Engineer keen to learn more of C# and .net programming. Currently using C and C++ for microcontroller application.
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Re: How to enable balloon on XP

Fabio Poroli

3:59 4 Jan '06

As I had the same issue... It could be of help: You need to remove the following DWORD key in the registry (probably setting it to 1 is also fine) to have the balloons working: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\EnableBalloonTips
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What with tray?

rent0n

23:00 24 Nov '05

I was looking to use this code as a tray application notifier. Unfortunately it does not work in that way. Problem is when we want to pass the handle from the NotifyIcon to the HoverBallon object. Do you have any idea how to fix it? rent0n
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Right to Left Ballon

AmirSasan

10:38 10 Nov '05

How do i create a Right to Left Ballon? could you please help me?
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Re: Right to Left Ballon

freshonlineMax

18:21 4 Mar '06

Hello I have this problem too. Can anybody help me about this. Thank you.
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Update Balloon Text

belzu

1:12 13 Oct '05

Thanks for the great article, to update the balloon text I’ve added the following property and constants in FMSBalloonTips.cs:



private const int TTM_UPDATETIPTEXT = WM_USER + 57;

private Control m_parent = null;



public void SetToolTip(Control parent, string tipText)

{

   System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(parent.Handle!=IntPtr.Zero, "parent hwnd is null", "SetToolTip");

   m_parent = parent;

   

 

  ...

}



public string Text {

    get {

        return m_displayText;

    }set {

        m_displayText = value;

        System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(m_parent.Handle !=IntPtr.Zero, "Parent control is null", "Set parent before updateing the Text");

 

        TOOLINFO ti = new TOOLINFO();

        ti.cbSize = Marshal.SizeOf(ti);

        ti.hwnd = m_parent.Handle;

        ti.hinst = m_tool.Handle;

        ti.lpszText = m_displayText;

		

        // update the tool tip text

        IntPtr ptrStruct = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(Marshal.SizeOf(ti));

        Marshal.StructureToPtr(ti, ptrStruct, true);

        SendMessage(

            m_tool.Handle, 

            TTM_UPDATETIPTEXT, 

            0, 

            ptrStruct);

 

            ti = (TOOLINFO)Marshal.PtrToStructure(ptrStruct, typeof(TOOLINFO));

            Marshal.FreeHGlobal(ptrStruct);

        }

    }

Problems with Message Tip

Terrel

7:35 7 Aug '05

I am able to run the C# demo and found the suggested registry setting was unneccessary for WinXP. I followed the instruction to add Application.EnableVisualStyles() to the constructor of the parent form. The application does not run as a standalone app but is started through a reflection call so I had to add this to the constructor instead of to Main.

However, when I import FMSMessageTip.cs into my project I am unable to get the Close box to appear and the style of the icon is not WinXP. WndProc also never receives a left mouse button down message. Any ideas anyone?

Terrel