Question

Sorry for my bad English…
Using Delphi 7 I want to create a dialog window to show that something is happening in my application when i have to run slow processes.
My idea was to do something that i can use like:

with TMyDialog.Create do
begin
  //call the time consuming method here
  Free;
end;

When i create the dialog, a window with an animation or something will show and will disappear after the time consuming method ends (on the free method) – it would be nice if I could manually update the progress from that dialog, in cases when the process give me such information:

with TMyDialog.Create do
begin
  while time_consuming_method do
  begin
    UpdateStatusOnMyDyalog();
  end;
  Free;
end;

but normally it would only be a animation to show that something is happening.

Has someone did something like that, knows a component or have any suggestions on whats the best way to do it in the most clean and simple way?

Answer 1

The bad but easy way to do this is to call Application.ProcessMessages or UpdateWindow(Handle) (to update the form) and increment a progressbar during your time_consuming_method. A slightly better method would be to wrap your time_consuming_method up into a class with an OnProgress event. Finally as other people have suggested you could use a separate thread for your time_consuming_method – which is the most powerful technique, but has the worst learning curve.