Question

I was wondering, how would you go about writing an application that basically houses other applications inside of it?

The reason I ask is that I’d love to build an app that ‘conquers’ my current explosion of open windows. I’ve used virtual window managers before and they’re nice and all, but I could do so many things with an app like I mention.

Alternatively does anyone know of an easy to use/intuitive application for confining windows to ‘regions’ of your screen? Something like GridMove, but more intuitive and less flakey?

Answer 1

You could create a window, then you could enumerate all Windows that have the style WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW, select the ones belonging to the application you want to house, then call SetParent on the window, setting the parent to the window you created. You could also use FindWindow to find a window by its title.

All the windows inside the house can never leave the house window’s boundaries, but they still follow all the same rules. You can still click-and-drag windows etc.

The problem here is that if the application inside the house creates another window, its parent will most likely be the desktop window, not the house window.