Unable to stop a window showing before ready

Targets Windows
1

I’ve spent so long trying to stop flicker and drawing actions being visible in Windows.

I stupidly imagined that setting a window to be visible = false
then arranging things
then making it visible

would be enough.
But when I open the document window, I always get a window opening animation, with a few half drawn controls on it.
Then it goes invisible (even though set to visible = false in the IDE)
Then my arrangement code runs
Then the window is made visible
Then Activate fires

How do I stop the window from appearing in this half baked format before I am ready?
Windows 11, Xojo 2018 for this project

1 Like
2

I too am interested in the solution.

I have the same issue, but in regards positioning the window and changing the Toolbar to be inside the menu. I have not found any workaround so far. It is a problem on macOS too.

3

How do you show the window? Using Window.Show?
Also, is Implicit Instance turned on?

4

Half the problem is that Open() simply doesn’t fire when I create the new window.
It’s straight into activate or other events.

5

No
Its always x as new mywindow
mywindow.show

No amount of .visible = false
or WM_SETREDRAW calls stops it from just leaping into existence as a mostly grey window, then drawing.

6

Can’t you open it offscreen ?
Then move it where you need it once all initialization are done…

7

you mean

var x as new mywindow
x.show

in this case you can do something
var x as new mywindow
x.initsomething
x.show

and some flicker can happen with container controls, if so check all theirs properties
and special options.

8

No container controls.
I cannot set Left or Top properties in the IDE.
By the time I can set the position, it has already been displayed badly.

Open() doesn’t fire. (checked with a debug log since breakpoints didn’t work)

The window is a subclass
In the contructor of the parent, I set the color and position of some controls if it is windows.
The constructor is called once only no matter how many windows I open.

Those things may be not relevant, but it all feels very flaky.
I’ve mostly ignored it (or tried to work around it) for years, but I’m having an intolerant week.

9

What Xojo version? As currently Event Open does not exist anymore, could it be a side effect?

10

As currently Event Open does not exist anymore,

Xojo 2018
I am using API1 only, and the window is a ‘Window’ not a ‘DesktopWindow’

(
Open() failing has been a problem for me since well before 2015

I commonly add a call to initialisation code into both Open and Activate events with a flag to ensure it runs only once no matter which of these occurs first, or whether only one of them executes)

11

Well… Currently it works. I tested it (Event Opening). I skipped the entire 2017 and 2018 generations due to lots of problems related to 64bit and DirectX

12

I think Xojo 2018 suffers from post Direct2D transition issues. Have you tried a newer version?

13

Amusingly, this IS me trying a newer version.
I can mostly rely on Xojo 2015… anything after that wasn’t drawing stuff properly and was too slow.
(The work I have put in just in the last week to get 2018 to work is the closest I have got to a build I could consider shipping for a very long time)

This is Xojo 2021:

image
image1118×376 19.7 KB

(The message appears to relate to C+ DLLs but this is a recent Windows 11, and I have both run the installer and placed copies of the DLLs local to the EXE)

14

If you post a demo project of it happening I’ll see what I can do to help.

1 Like
15

Its a huge project relying on MBS plugins … If I can make a cut down project that runs, I will .

16

We have the same problem but use Xojo 2014r2.1 for MS-Windows builds.

1 Like
17

I hope that’s

Dim x as new mywindow
x.show

Also, make sure the implicit instance property is also set to false in the inspector.

1 Like
18

Greg, do you share my opinion that the ImplicitInstance feature should be thrown into a volcano? It has been an endless source of confusion for years and tends to send new users down the wrong path - nothing else in the language self-instantiates and I feel that it sets up the incorrect expectations as to how objects work.

19

I would agree with that too. It was a sop to VB users but has caused many a query here over the years.
Its nothing to do with this, however

20

It is