60843 - RFE: Installer should use irregularly shaped windows

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I think to add a little more spunk to the Mozilla installer, it should use 
irregularly shaped windows. The way you do this (I haven't done it in a while) 
is to define a transparent color for a bitmap, and then create a region by 
scanning in all the lines in the image (where it isn't the transparent color), 
and making an array of them (as two point polygons). Then you create a region 
from that array by the CreatePolyPolygonRgn function 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/gdi/regions_9dbi.htm (you can make a 
polygon by a set of many points defining the outside of the window, but there 
is no point in my opinion). Then you use SetWindowRgn 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/wcedoc/wcesdkr/gdi_130.htm to make the window 
defined by the region. You can now show the window because it is irregularly 
shaped (if you showed it before, it would have shown the transparent color, 
also). I used the technique to make irregularly shaped windows in one program I 
made. Too bad you can't do irregularly shaped windows in all OSes or the whole 
Mozilla program could use this tecnique. The final thing to note that to make 
the window moveable, and resizable, you have to detect mouse clicks and move 
the window yourself in the code as the user moves the mouse. The best thing to 
do is create a timer that moves the window a few times every second, so that 
the window moves somewhat smoothly, but the system doesn't get bogged down as 
these windows take a little longer to display. You can still place images 
inside the window, and draw inside the window like normal. Things drawn outside 
the region get cut off (I am not sure if they appear if you set the region to 
go around them afterwards, but I would assume they do).

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> Too bad you can't do irregularly shaped windows in all OSes or the whole
> Mozilla program could use this tecnique.

It's just as well you can't do irregularly shaped windows in all OSes or the 
whole Mozilla program might be tempted to make itself a laughing stock by using 
this technique (like the Quicktime 4.0 Player).

This RFE would make the installer harder to use, would slow down redrawing and 
movement of the installer window, and would cause anger among those who see 
problems in Mozilla that could have been fixed in the time spent on doing this. 
Recommend WONTFIX.

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

Umm..I can't imagine anyone spending time and resources to fix this.  As if the 
concept irregularly shaped windows wasn't a bad idea itself, you just want it 
for the installer?  This seems like a big, misguided waste of time.

Comment 3

[Luke]

Per recommendations

Comment 4

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Maybe to you, but others might think its a good idea. 

Comment 5

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Assigning to self.

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Marking NEW since someone has signed up to work on it -- but I am pretty certain 
that even if a fully working patch was submitted, it would not be accepted by the 
module owner.

Comment 7

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I think the best thing to do if adding irregular shaped windows is to use 
moderation. Whoever is doing this shouldn't make the windows stars or something 
IMHO. It should be something simple that still looks professional. The main 
window in the background should stay full screen too.

Comment 8

[Henrik Gemal]

FYI: The current installer doesn't have the blue background anymore. If we 
implement irregularly shaped windows there shouldn't be any full screen 
background.

Comment 9

[timeless]

full screen apps are generally stupid. I count full screen installers among 
those apps. Are you saying that we don't fullscreen anymore? [good]

Comment 10

[Henrik Gemal]

mozilla-win32-installer dont do full screen anymore...
per request of some netscape people

Comment 11

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Marking Wontfix for now. A note: Windows XP and media player both make frequent
use of irregularly shaped windows.

Comment 12

[Grace Bush]

verified