Question

Developing for WM 6, I call CreateWindow with hWndParent set to the window I want to be the owner. I do not set the WS_CHILD style, but the window created becomes a child window nevertheless. What is the proper way of doing this?

The MSDN article for CreateWindow mentions this behavior for WinCE 1.0:

Windows CE 1.0 does not support owned windows, except for dialog boxes. If the hwndParent parameter is not NULL, the window is implicitly given the WS_CHILD style.

Or, maybe, is all of the MSDN WinCE documentation wrong when it says that CreateWindow does create owned windows and CreateDialog* functions end up calling CreateWindow, as Hans Passant’s comment implies?

Answer 1

The proper way of doing this is to give the window the WS_POPUP style, as outlined in Microsoft’s Window Relationship Fundamentals document for WinCE 3.0:

You can create an owner/owned window relationship between top-level windows when you create a window with the WS_POPUP style. Because top-level windows do not have parent windows, the window that you specify as the parent window when you call the CreateWindow function becomes the owner window of the new window.