Question

I have a Winforms application, which hosts two PDF Viewers (Unmanaged C++) in its panels.

I want to have application wide hotkeys for project handling (Open,Save,Close,…) which would work even when users focus is on the hosted PDF Viewer.

I managed to achieve that via Winapi and RegisterHotKey, but client doesnt like that those are system wide (e.g. they disable the same MS Word hotkeys)

I did try to disable and enable global hotkeys on Form’s Activate/Deactivate events, however those events appear even when i dont leave my own app, for example on top-menu entry or on a dialog-box.

Are there other solutions for application-wide hotkeys, that would work even if the focus is on the hosted application?

SOLUTION:

In the main Form, I handle Activated and Deactivate events like this :

public void PDFPicker_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var foregroundHwnd = GUI.winapiwrap.GetForegroundWindow();
        if (foregroundHwnd==this.Handle ||   this.OwnedForms.Any(form => form.Handle==foregroundHwnd))
        {
            if (!this.hotkeys.Any())
            {
                registerHotkeys();
                this.Text = "Hotkeys just registered";
            }                
        }
    }
    public void PDFPicker_Deactivate(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        var foregroundHwnd = GUI.winapiwrap.GetForegroundWindow();
        if (foregroundHwnd == this.Handle || this.OwnedForms.Any(form => form.Handle == foregroundHwnd))
        {

        }
        else
        {
          unregisterHotkeys();
          this.Text = "Hotkeys off";
        }
    }

Then in the dialog, which is in the OwnedForms array, i call just this:

private void QuestionPostingPanel_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        parent.PDFPicker_Activated(sender, e);            
    }

    private void QuestionPostingPanel_Deactivate(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        parent.PDFPicker_Deactivate(sender, e);
    }

In case of more such dialogs, I would inherit AbstractDialog : Form, add those 2 event functions and a reference to parent, and then inherit all of them from this AbstractDialog.

While registering/unregistering GlobalHotkeys, it was a problem for me when I tried doing that in parallel – global hot keys were bound to a thread.

Answer 1

So then check on Form Activate/Deactivate events whether the form is a foreground window or not (::GetForegroundWindow()) and then disable/enable hotkeys appropriately.