Question

I am displaying a custom form as a hint. I want the hint window not to get the focus.

Enabled property of the hint form is set to False and I also handle the WM_MOUSE_ACTIVATEwindow message and return MA_NOACTIVATE. Nevertheless each time the hint window is displayed the border of my main window flickers (Windows 7 with transparent borders).

How can I avoid this flickering?

Answer 1

I assume you show your own hint form when you handle Application.OnShowHint, e.g. as follows:

procedure TMainForm.ApplicationShowHint(var HintStr: string;
  var CanShow: Boolean; var HintInfo: THintInfo);
var
  HintForm: THintForm;
begin
  CanShow := False;
  HintForm := THintForm.Create(nil);
  HintForm.HintLabel.Caption := HintStr;
  HintForm.Left := HintInfo.HintPos.X;
  HintForm.Top := HintInfo.HintPos.Y;
  ShowWindow(HintForm.Handle, SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE);
end;

That last line does the trick here with D7 (and with a THintFrom as a normal form with default settings, e.g. Enabled = True) on XP and W7.