VB.Net Aero Peek to form

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I am trying to make an Alt+Tab type of thing for my program. The program is a notes program that will have multiple opened forms (notes). I don't want to use the native Alt+Tab because it would potentially get extremely cluttered. However, in my form of Alt+Tab, which would be for my specific program only, I would like to be able to do the Aero-Peek effect that the native Windows 7 Alt+Tab has. Is there an API call that I can make to accomplish this? I have done a little searching, but All I found was this[^]. Which, does not look like it uses the native Aero-Peek. It does not look like it has the fade effect that the native one does. Please let me know if there is a simplish way to do this.

Thanks in advance :)

Posted 9-Apr-11 11:06am

Matchlighter

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2 solutions

Solution 2

Win7Lib is a .NET component which not only gives you access to the 'real' aero peek feature but, also allows you to control minimize/restore animations and more on Windows 7. No cheap tricks are used to do it! You can find more information at: http://se7en-soft.com/products/win7lib/

Posted 26-Sep-11 17:11pm

xsoftwerx

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Matchlighter 26-Sep-11 23:40pm

That looks like it would do the job, but I am not to enthused about the price tag. It surprises me that Aero-Peek wouldn't have an easy-ish to access API call.

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Nish Nishant · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-09T15:02:00

Solution 1

There is no publicly exposed native API or COM control that can do that. If you can use WPF, you should be able to come up with something of your own that closely resembles that. It will be much harder with WinForms.

[Edit]
-------

Based on your comment, I think I need to clarify my answer. You certainly can do something like this (and not just on Windows 7) as long as you roll your own custom control/code to do that. What I meant is that there's no publicly exposed API that lets you do this easily.

Posted 9-Apr-11 15:02pm

Nish Nishant

Updated 13-Apr-11 2:48am

v2

Comments

Matchlighter 12-Apr-11 22:41pm

The DisplayFusion Beta (which I believe is developed with .Net) has an aero peek function like the Windows taskbar, which, leads me to believe that it must be possible.

Nish Nishant 13-Apr-11 8:46am

Of course it is possible, so long as you write a custom class/method to do that.

What I meant is that it's not exposed by the OS.

Matchlighter 13-Apr-11 12:17pm

So, You mean I can emulate it and make something like it, but not use the native way?

Nish Nishant 13-Apr-11 12:23pm

Yeah, that's correct.

Jelle Vergeer 22-Jun-11 16:32pm

There is an undocumented function in dwmapi.dll called "DwmpActivateLivePreview" EntryPoint="#113" . I think that is what you are looking for..