Drawing in window while resizing leaves Unpainted border
The problem that I have seems to be trivial, but I cannot find a way to solve it. Here it is. I have a window with some graphics in it.
For simplicity lets say it's a solid green rectangle which fills the entire client area of the window. I want this rectangle to be redrawn and to fill the entire window every time the window changes its size. What I did originally was this. I posted WM_PAINT message from WM_SIZE handler.
It works, but if I move mouse fast I see a bit of unpainted (white) area around the green rectangle (actually one or two sides only, close to where mouse is). My understanding of the problem is that system thread which handles user input (mouse) works faster than my handler of WM_PAINT message. It means that by the time I start drawing an updated rectangle (its size is taken from WM_SIZE), mouse actually moves a little bit and system draws a new window frame which is different from what I'm trying to fill with the green. This creates unfilled areas next to borders which move during resizing.
When I stop resizing, green eventually fills the entire window, but during resizing there is a bit of flickering happening close to borders which is annoying. In order to solve the problem I tried the following.
bool finishedPainting;
RECT windowRect;
case WM_PAINT :
// ..... painting here
finishedPainting = TRUE;
break;
case WM_SIZE :
// .... some actions
// posting WM_PAINT
InvalidateRect(hWnd, NULL, FALSE);
PostMessage(hWnd, WM_PAINT, 0, 0);
break;
case WM_SIZING :
// this supposedly should prevent the system from passing
// new window size to WM_SIZE
if (!finishedPainting) memcpy((void*)lParam, &windowRect, sizeof(windowRect));
else {
// remember current window size for later use
memcpy(&windowRect, (void*)lParam, sizeof(windowRect));
finishedPainting = FALSE;
}
return TRUE;
It doesnt' work. As a slight variation, I also tried this.
bool finishedPainting;
POINT cursorPos;
case WM_PAINT :
// ..... painting here
finishedPainting = TRUE;
break;
case WM_SIZE :
if (!finishedPainting) SetCursorPos(cursorPos.x, cursorPos.y);
else {
finishedPainting = FALSE;
GetCursorPos(&cursorPos);
// .... some actions
InvalidateRect(hWnd, NULL, FALSE);
PostMessage(hWnd, WM_PAINT, 0, 0);
}
break;
This also doesn't work. As far as I understand the solution to the problem lies in somehow slowing the mouse down so that it moves to the next position on the screen (dragging the corner or the side of the window with it) only after the painting is finished.
Any ideas how to achieve this? Or maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with the way I see the problem and solution lies somewhere else?
// ====================================================
Update
I did a few experiments and here is what I found
1) When resizing, the sequence of messages is WM_SIZING - WM_NCPAINT - WM_SIZE - WM_PAINT. This looks a bit strange to me. I would expect WM_SIZE to follow WM_SIZING without interruption by WM_NCPAINT
2) In each message handler I was checking the width of a window during resizing (for simplicity I was only changing width). Surprisingly, the width measured in WM_SIZE turned out to be different from the one in WM_SIZING, but the same as in WM_NCPAINT and WM_PAINT. This is not a problem as such, just a wierd fact.
3) I came to the conclusion that there are two major causes for flicker happening near the window borders. The first one is that WM_NCPAINT comes before WM_PAINT. Imagine that you are stretching your window. The new frame will appear first (WM_NCPAINT comes first), then WM_PAINT fills the client area. A human eye catches that short period of time when the new frame is already on the screen, but it is empty. Even if you specify that you don't want window background to be deleted before repainting, still newly added area is empty and you can see it for a split second. This reason for flicker is best demonstrated when you grab the right window edge and move it quickly to the right. The other reason for flickering effect is less obvious and best seen when you grab the left window edge and move it to the left. During this move you will see unfilled areas along the RIGHT edge. As far as I understand the effect is caused by this. When user is doing resize Windows does the following: A) it sends WM_NCPAINT to draw the new frame, B) it copies the content of the old client area into the new top left window corner (in our case it moved to the left), C) it sends WM_PAINT to fill the new client area. However during stage B for some reason Windows produces those unfilled areas along the right edge, although it seems like it shouldn't because the old content should just stay where it is until it gets repainted over during WM_PAINT.
Ok, the question remains - how to get rid of those artefacts during resizing. As far as I can see now it is impossible to do using standard techniques and functions, because they are caused by the sequence of steps Windows performs during resizing. Swapping WM_NCPAINT and WM_PAINT would probably help, but this seems to be beyond our control (unless there is a simple way to do that which I just don't know about).
You shouldn't post or send WM_PAINT messages yourself. Rather, use ::InvalidateRect to invalidate parts of your window and let Windows decide when to send the WM_PAINT messages.
Windows works this way on purpose. It's generally considered more important to be responsive to the user (ie the mouse) than to have a fully up-to-date painted window.
If you're always painting the entire window in your WM_PAINT handler, you can eliminate a lot of flicker by overriding the WM_ERASEBKGND handler and return without doing anything.
If you really insist on preferring window updates over mouse responsiveness, replace the InvalidateRect call with a RedrawWindow call using the RDW_UPDATENOW flag.
Edit: Your observations make sense. WM_SIZING comes before the window is resized, to give you a chance to modify the size and/or position. You might try painting the client area in the WM_NCPAINT handler, even before the border is drawn. After you paint it you can validate the client area to keep it from drawing again.
It's a bad idea to manually post WM_PAINT or WM_SIZE . One weird hacky crazy thing you can do though, is to record the new resized co-ordinates in a RECT in WM_SIZE , Use MoveWindow to change the size of the window back to it's previous one, then manually resize it again using MoveWindow in the WM_PAINT message after you've done the painting.
Another possible solution is to constantly fill your window with the color regardless of whether the screen is resized or not. ie
// in the WinMain function
if (GetMessage(&msg,NULL,NULL,0))
{
TranslateMessage(&msg,NULL,NULL);
DispatchMessage(&msg,NULL,NULL);
}
else
{
// fill your window with the color in here
}
Or, of course, you can just set the background color of your window to green, instead of doing all the painting yourself:
// Before RegisterClass or RegisterClassEx
// wincl is a WNDCLASS or WNDCLASSEX
wincl.hbrBackground = CreateSolidBrush(RGB(50, 238, 50));
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