Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cscnj!paul
From: paul@cscnj.csc.COM (Paul Moody)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Child windows
Summary: Child windows
Message-ID: <335@cscnj.csc.COM>
Date: 25 Sep 89 19:40:00 GMT
References: <809@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> <810@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>
Organization: Computer Sciences Corp., Piscataway NJ
Lines: 32

In article <810@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>, rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) writes:
> When I create some overlapped child windows in the client area of a
> program, they all get an "inactive" border and caption bar. I did not
> find a usable way to get the child window with the input focus having
> an "active" frame and caption bar (like it is the case in Excel).
... deleted .... 
> Can anybody help ?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Kai Uwe Rommel, Munich

What you must do is control the style of the child window yourself.
This is done using the SetWindowLong call.
eg:
   SetWindowLong(hChildWnd, GWL_STYLE,
		 WS_CHILD | WS_SYSMENU | WS_CAPTION | WS_VISIBLE);
is a minimal call to "activate" a child window.
Note that you must send WM_ACTIVATE and WM_NCACTIVATE messages 
yourself.  Also, you must keep track of which child is active. If the 
child is obscured, you must call BringWindowToTop to make it visible.

There was a good intro to mdi in Microsoft System Journal, but I 
dont remember the issue.

In Windows version 3, mdi is "builtin". I havent played with it yet,
but it looks better than the "roll your own" versions.

Paul Moody
-- 
Paul Moody @CSC
...usual disclaimer...