Question

Possible Duplicate:
OpenEdge ABL automatically close a yes/no message after a certon amount of time has pasted

I have a yes/no message box that I want to clear after 14 seconds have past. I believe the first step to do this is to get the message box’s handle so that I can make it disappear

Answer 1

I’m afraid the simple answer is “You can’t”.

This is not a limitation of Progress, it is inherent in Windows message boxes no matter what programming language you use. The message box is modal to the parent application, meaning that your application freezes until the message box is closed. No matter what coding you write to close the message box, it will not run while the message box is open.

The not so simple answer offers two possibilities: To have part of your application NOT freeze when modal forms are displayed displayed requires multi-threading, which we don’t talk about in polite company. The other option is to display the message box as non-modal, i.e. it does not freeze your app. To achieve this, you cannot use MESSAGE VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX, because that will ALWAYS be modal. You will have to create your own message box – a window or frame that you can display and hide as you need.

I prefer using a Frame rather than a Window. Disable the default frame, show the Message frame which contains Yes/No buttons. Your app is not frozen, but the user can only interact with the message frame. When the user clicks a button or the time is up, hide the message frame and enable the default frame again.

FRAME Message-Frame:VISIBLE = TRUE.
FRAME default-frame:SENSITIVE = FALSE.
  /* do your thing */
FRAME Message-Frame:VISIBLE = FALSE.
FRAME default-frame:SENSITIVE = TRUE.

Remember to set the TOP-ONLY attribute of the message frame to TRUE, or it won’t appear above the default frame.