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Is it possible to "lock" one window on top of another? (1 Viewer)

Scott_lb

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Oct 7, 2002
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Whenever I do work on my computer I often like to have a movie running in the background. At home, I'll pop a DVD in my home player and work on my laptop within viewing distance. However, when I'm doing work at my favorite coffee shop (which happens a lot, by the way) I will sometimes pop in a DVD and have it running in the background while I work on Office documents. Therefore, I can hear the movie but cannot see it unless I click on the DVD window. Is there any way that I can "lock" the DVD window on to the screen (after shrinking it down to a smaller size) so I can have a little window showing the movie while I continue to work on Office docuemnts?
 

Scott Barnhart

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Jan 3, 2001
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Here is one way to do it:

Get CMDOW and then run 'cmdow [window title] /TOP' where [window title] is the text in the title bar of your DVD player.

'cmdow [window title] /NOT' will undo the change.
 

ChristopherDAC

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AE5VI
Why not just toggle "Always On Top"? There ought to be an option for that in the same menu which gives you stuff like "Run Maximised" [uncheck this].
 

Chris Bardon

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The short answer is "no". An application can set a window to be always on top (it's one of the parameters you can apply to a window when creating/modifying it), but there's nothing in the OS to set any window to be always on top.

There are a bunch of other spplications that will do this though. I've actually written one myself that will lock windows on top, as well as allow you to show/hide windows and work with multiple virtual desktops. I can email you a copy if you'd like, but be forewarned:

1-It's distributed "as is"-I can't see what could go wrong (I've been using this version for three months now with very few problems).
2-You'll need to have the latest .net framework installed (since I wrote the app in C# to experiment with the language).
 

Scott_lb

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 7, 2002
Messages
592
I downloaded the program and cannot seem to get it to work properly. After running the .exe file, a black screen pops up (dos?) prompting me to enter a command. I entered:

cmdow InterWin DVD 4/TOP

(and other variations of it - all caps, no caps, using [ ], etc.) and it says that it doesn't recognize the command. What am I doing wrong here? Your thoughts are appreciated!
 

AlbertA

Stunt Coordinator
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Nov 3, 1999
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107
If the window title contains spaces you need to enclose the title in quotes like this "InterWin DVD 4". Or it could also mean that it doesn't really know where the command is, so you need to specify the whole path to the command like C:temp cmdow.


Anyway, since it seems you only want the DVD player window to be on top you can make a shortcut (a batch file) so that you don't have to type the title every time you want to do this.

1. Create an empty text file.
2. Rename it to something like dvd_on_top.bat (Note that the bat extension is necessary - this will be the batch file)
3. Right click the file and choose edit.
4. Type the full path where you have cmdow.exe and the options . It would be something like this:

C:tempcmdow "InterWin DVD 4" /TOP

5. Save the file.
6. Open InterWin DVD and double click the batch file. The window should now be always on top.



Now if you want to do this to other windows you need either:
go to the start->run and type the whole command in there, For example:
C:tempcmdow "Some window" /TOP


or to save a little typing you would right click on My computer, go to properties, choose the Advanded tab, go to Environment Variables, under System variables find Path and click Edit.
Where it says variable value, go to the end, add a semicolon and type the path where cmdow is located. For example:
C:temp.
Now you don't need to type where the whole path to cmdow.
On Start->Run you can type:
cmdow "Some window" /TOP (notice only cmdow and not something like c:tempcmdow)


Hope all of this helps.
 

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