Progress Bars vs. Meters

Until now I always used the "msctls_progress32" class for progress bars. It's easy to use and works fine. The drawback is that it only supports two "styles". (either the "block" or the "smooth" fill-type)

I know there exists a different type of progress bar, which can be configured in more ways. (like showing text in the progress bar moving with the actual position)

I found out that this type uses the class type "meter" instead of "msctls_progress32". However, the PBM_* constants from my WINDOWS.INC did not work to control the "meter" bar (which was no big suprise).

By debugging some programs which use this type of progress bars I found out that the "meter" bar is controlled by some parameters which are in the same range as the PBM_* constants (WM_USER+???), but work different.

My first guess was that the "meter" class is nothing which COMCTL32.DLL supports by default, but I couldn't find any calls to "USER32.RegisterClass" in the programs I debugged. I also think it's a bit strange that all the programs I tried would call this bar "meter" if they all had to individually create this class.

Am I working in a completely wrong direction or where is my mistake?

maybe they coded their own class that draws their meter and use some unused windows messages to control it, so you cant use it until you get that lib or code own one

 ¡°meter¡± isn¡¯t an exceptionally creative name, so many people could easily develop a custom control with the same name.

Similarly, there are sites full of special controls that people have made for free download, and 99% of all companies will search through those first rather than spend development time making their own, unless they have very special needs.

As for the messages being the same range as the others, this is to be expected.
All custom messages sent to custom controls will be based off WM_USER.

And really, let¡¯s face it. Such a simple control could be done in a few hours, even taking care to make it professional.
I would suggest either searching for an existing one as other companies do, or just quickly make one from scratch.


L. Spiro

he can also instead of building meter engine just do skining like window blinds does, and also meter will works and will be custom