LockWindowUpdate

If you use dynamic widgets, or if you dynamically resize or reposition widgets, you simply have to use function LockWindowUpdate especially on NT Terminal Server.
This is probably the most widely used API function, covered in every presentation and every publication. Actually that's why I didn't bother to cover LockWindowsUpdate before, but here it is at last...

PROCEDURE LockWindowUpdate EXTERNAL "user32.dll" :
  DEFINE INPUT  PARAMETER hWndLock AS LONG.
  DEFINE RETURN PARAMETER IsLocked AS LONG.
END PROCEDURE.

• hWndLock specify a windows handle to request a lock for that window. Specify 0 to clear the lock.
• IsLocked returns 0 if the function fails, nonzero if the function succeeds.

LockWindowUpdate temporarily disables drawing in the specified window. While a window is locked you can change the appearance of the window or the appearance and/or positions of its child windows (widgets). These changes will not be drawn until the window is unlocked. When the window is unlocked its area will be invalidated and will eventually receive a WM_PAINT message. LockWindowUpdate will improve the overall performance of a drawing operation when you need to modify several widgets.
You should not move, resize, or hide/view the locked window while it has a lock. If you do you will see the desktop or other surrounding windows flash.
Only one window at a time can be locked.
If LockWindowUpdate failed (returned IsLocked=0) it may be because an other window owns the lock. This means you should not call LockWindowUpdate(0,..) if you didn't get the lock in the first place, because you may inadvertently unlock a different window.

a demo program

Procedure LockWindowUpdate.w, which is attached, shows a window with a whole lot of widgets in it. When you press button "Move Widgets" each widget will be moved and resized a random amount of pixels. This operation is very slow and flashy if "use LockWindowUpdate" is not toggled.
The demo also shows the effect of hiding the frame during LockWindowUpdate: the window itself will behave quite nicely but all other visible windows, including the desktop will accidently be redrawn.

Attachments

lockwindowupdate.w.zip : example source