We've come to take for granted that when we move our mouse, press a key, or click a button applications will respond in kind. But how do these actions in our physical space or on our screen make their way to the applications we interact with? My goal for this jam is to bring visibility to the mechanism that makes this all possible: window messages. I hope you will join me in exploring and delighting in this simple yet fascinating part of Windows.
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&wmshowwindow I would not consider it finished, but I am releasing my project as it is the end of the jam. While other obligations meant I didn't have too much time to work on it, I found that I ran into a lot of challenges along the way, most remain unsolved. I had some trouble with the window positioning (console positioning with a top-positioned taskbar is still broken). The most troublesome issue was the lag I experienced. It's present in the console version, but becomes particularly obtuse with the edit control version. I experimented with a few things to reduce this lag (reusing the same wndproc, altering when the logging takes place), but to no avail.
I would be lying if I said I was happy with how this turned out, but releasing nothing doesn't feel right, either. Therefore, I've decided to release the code and a build of the master branch "as is". While I did not come away with a nice way to view window messages, I did gain an appreciation for just how much is going on behind the scenes every time basically anything happens in the GUI, and how easy it is to encounter lag and problems if the saber dance taking place inside your wndproc isn't perfectly performed.
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/errorsuccessdev/VisibilityJam2024
Download: https://github.com/errorsuccessdev/VisibilityJam2024/releases/tag/1.0
&wmshowwindow I attempted to ditch the console window for a "window" window, however this is insanely laggy (notice all the repeated lines in the edit control). Do I attempt to fix the lag, or continue enjoying the simple pleasure of stdout? I am undecided.
&wmshowwindow It's the end of day one (at least for me), and I've got a nice little prototype going. Getting these two windows in their starting positions proved to be more challenging than I thought, but I'm happy with the result. The messages can be a little verbose in their raw form, but it does give an appreciation for just how many of these are sent out every second.