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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T17:10:40+00:00

I understand that Chrome using re-parenting in order to have child plugins such as

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I understand that Chrome using re-parenting in order to have child plugins such as Flash render from different processes.

I have experimented with this, and I have got it working using the SetParent Win32 call.

However, when I force the child GUI thread to block, the parent process will also hang as soon as the mouse moves over a the window area owned by the child process. Presumably this is because the message loop in the parent application is calling down to the child and it never responds. How does Chrome get around this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Flash uses the re-parenting trick. It has its own .exe and renders to its own window. That doesn’t prevent hangs, any message that is sent from that window to its owner is going to block when the owner isn’t pumping messages. As you found out.

    Browsers uses a different trick. They create an invisible helper process for each tab and render to a memory device context. And blits the result to their desktop window. Any input messages are shuttled back to that process. That makes them immune from crashes and hangs in that process, killing that helper process keeps the browser going. Much harder to do yourself.

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