Visual studio screensaver template

Any computer that runs the application must have version 2. If you plan to share your screensaver with friends, you should let them know that they must also install Framework version 2. After your project is loaded into the Visual C environment, you can compile and run it in one step. If the screensaver does not build , ensure that the latest release of the Feeds reference is loaded. Also note that the capitalization of some property names has been changed for the final release of the Windows RSS Platform, such as IFeed.

Name and IFeed. The ScreenSaver project file has been extended with a custom build task that renames the output of the build an executable file with the. SCR extension. The following lines in ScreenSaver. Select the Build Events tab, and enter the following in the "Post-build event command line" text box:. To complete the installation, you must set the RSS screensaver as the default screensaver for Windows. You have now installed the screensaver.

When Windows activates the screensaver due to a period of inactivity, it launches the ssNews. While the screensaver is active, you can use keyboard shortcuts to view the loaded list of feeds and items, and move forward and backward through the images. The screensaver sample handles these arguments in the Program. The debug mode flag is passed as a command line parameter when debugging in Visual Studio. In debug mode, the feed and item list are displayed by default.

In addition, the form reverts to a standard sizeable border style to simplify the debugging process. To simplify the process of walking the hierarchy of the feedlist, CommonFeedListUtils. It relies on a mechanism that is new to version 2. Internally, the method uses the Queue class to manage a list of folders.

The method takes a single parameter, the folder object, to use as the base of the enumeration. The method is designed to be used in a foreach loop, as follows:. By default, the interval of fadeTimer is set to 40 msecs. At each tick event, two things happen: the opacity level of the ItemDescriptionView is adjusted by the value of textAlphaDelta , and the ScreenSaverForm is refreshed and repainted. Two "terminal" effects also occur when the opacity reaches its maximum and minimum values.

First, at maximum opacity, the Interval property of fadeTimer is changed to the value of fadePauseInterval , which is msecs by default.

During this pause, the screen will not refresh automatically, so you must explicitly call Refresh in response to events that update the screen, such as KeyDown events.

You can modify the length of the pause in the Configuration dialog box. The event handler for this event moves the current index of the FeedList to the next item. If Windows Internet Explorer doesn't download enclosures automatically, how does the screensaver find images to display? The answer is: it doesn't. If an image has not been downloaded, the screensaver displays a blank screen.

Even if you have clicked on the link in the browser and the image has been downloaded to the Temporary Internet Files TIF folder; the screensaver can only discover and display files that have been downloaded to the enclosures folder associated with the feed.

Now, the rest of this file spends a lot of its code in opening up an options file, reading the data, writing to it, etc. My entire persistence code then became:. Public Sub LoadOptions. If String. End If. Public Sub SaveOptions. If Not String. Of course, by that point, I was getting build errors all over the place, since I was now out of synch with the options form and the screensaver form. Inherits System. I then copied all of the generated crud into that partial class and got it out of the way.

All I really needed to do now is to replace the existing controls with three checkboxes tags,date, and subdirectories and two edit boxes speed and directory.

Class restrictedTextBoxClass. Inherits TextBox. If msg. Return MyBase. ProcessCmdKey msg, keyData. End Function. End Class. Then, given that, I reopened the frmOptions. I also moved the initialization crud into a partial class file, like I did for the options dialog. I set its BackColor to black, and then I added two controls and the order was important :.

I knew that I was going to need to use some. NET 3. NET tab. You must edit it so it will take an argument of " string[] args "; that way, you will be able to read the arguments passed to your application:. The args parameter will now hold all the arguments passed to your application. Now, you must interpret those arguments. Only one argument should be passed to a screensaver, the argument that tells the screensaver what Windows wants it to do.

We could read the arguments easily with a simple if statement, like so:. However, it is possible for no arguments to be passed to a screensaver. Thus, we should probably add another if statement:. That way, you won't get an index out of range exception if you try to reference the first argument passed and there is nothing there. At this point, if we try to run our application, it would run through like a console application with no code, because we never invoke Application.

Run anywhere in our Main. After we do a few things here, that will be taken care of. Now, I have made several screensavers in C that support multiple monitors, and I will explain to you the structure I use to make them. I'm not saying my way is the best, but it works, and it's organized. To have multiple monitor support, instead of simply making a main form and stretching it to fill up all the screens, I make the screensaver so it will show a different main form on every screen by the way, whenever I refer to the main form in the code, I will call it " MainForm ".

To do this, the System. Screen class comes in handy. Take a look at this code:. The foreach loop you see is looping through all the screens monitors on the current computer. I then create a new main form for that monitor, passing it the bounds of that screen, and showing it.

But, wait a minute, that will not work because there is no constructor method in our main form that takes an argument. So, let us make one. I added this exact constructor to my main form:. As you can see, it takes an argument of System. Rectangle that's what bounds are , and in the constructor, it would set the form's bounds to the one passed in the constructor. It would also hide the cursor, because like I said, screensavers hide the cursor.

Typically, I will make a method like that to show the screensaver, and put that in the class my main method is in Program. So, your Program class would now look like:.

Note: we must make the ShowScreenSaver method static when we put it in the Program class, as it is a static class. Guess what, we now have a working screensaver. Working, but not complete. Do you want the user to be able to choose some of the options in the screensaver? If so, simply create a form where the user can configure the options, and have your application so it will store those options in the application's settings, an ini file, the Registry, or wherever.

In this code, I referred to the configuration form as " ConfigureForm ", but that can be changed. Notice, I am using an Application. Run call to start the application, and all I am doing is pass it the configuration form as the application's main form. On the other hand, if you don't have any options the user can set, we can do something very easy, like so:.

That will show a message telling the user the screensaver has no configurable options. Then, since we never invoked Appliction. Run , the application will exit once the main method has run through, like a console application. The preview is when Windows wants your screensaver to preview itself in the little computer monitor on the screensaver dialog. There are two ways we can go about this.

Generally, I choose to screw the preview all together. By the way, if you don't want a preview, you are done. You don't need any code in the section that handles the preview, so when Windows calls your application to preview, it will start, run through, and since the Application. Run was never called, it will close in an inconceivably small amount of time like it never even ran.

That was easy. However, if you so desire for your screensaver to have a preview, I will teach you how to do it. This is a bit tricky. It takes a few APIs to do it. Windows will not automatically do some voodoo magic to make your application show perfectly in the preview window, you have to do it on your own. It does, however, lend you some help. With that, we can use a few APIs to make it the parent of our screensaver's main form.

This is how it will work:. Let's start to implement that. As it is now, it is set up in a way where there will be no preview since there is no code except for that lonely little comment. We must modify that to look like this:. Looks like that comment's not so lonely anymore. Anyway, that should be all you need to do to the Main function.

However, see the line:. That is passing MainForm the handle to the preview window in the form of an IntPtr. However, we have no constructor made for that form that will accept an IntPtr. Well, time to make one. Guess what, you don't have to do any work again because all you have to do is use this code I've already written:.

In case you haven't figured out, I am making a real screensaver as I am writing this tutorial. Anyway, that is exactly what you should use. But wait a minute, that is going to throw a whole bunch of errors at you if you try to use it right now.

That's because there are four APIs I'm using in there that aren't in your code yet. Here they are:. I believe I did a fairly good job of explaining exactly what is going on, so I'll move on. Oh, and about that variable in the constructor I gave you, called IsPreviewMode. That is to let the application know weather or not it is in preview mode when it's running.

If you are making a screensaver as you are reading this, make a global boolean called IsPreviewMode. You will need a variable like that because when you are in preview mode, you want to disable any mouse or key events that will make the screensaver exit.

View all page feedback. In this article. Creates a UWP app. The generated project includes a basic page that derives from the Windows. Page class that you can use to start building your UI. Creates a unit test project in C for a UWP app. For more information, see Unit test C code. Creates a Windows Runtime component in C that can be consumed by any UWP app, regardless of the programming language in which the app is written.

Creates an optional package with executable C code that can be loaded by an app. For more information, see Optional packages with executable code. For a walkthrough that demonstrates how to use this project template to create a simple game that uses DirectX, see Create a simple UWP game with DirectX. For more information, see DirectX game project templates. For more information, see Walkthrough: Create a traditional Windows Desktop application.