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From: rothberg@polya.Stanford.EDU (Edward Rothberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Does a window have to come up white?
Message-ID: <4412@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 12 Oct 88 19:01:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: polya.4412
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 21


I have a program in which the user needs to concentrate on the
information in a few windows.  In MultiFinder, it's just too
distracting to have all those other windows behind mine.
So what I want to do is have a fake desktop, a gray window the
size of the entire screen.  I only want to do this when the
user is actively using the my program, with things returning
to normal when it's not being used.

So, what do I do?  I tried opening an invisible window, setting
it's background pattern to gray, and then calling ShowWindow().
Unfortunately, the window comes up white, and doesn't go to
gray until I call an EraseRect().  As you could imagine, it
is extremely distracting to have this flash of white before
things go to gray.  Is there any way to gray out all of the
screen except the menu bar without having a flash of white
first and without being extremely MultiFinder unfriendly (i.e.
not using a window)?

Ed Rothberg
rothberg@polya.stanford.edu