HOWTO: Create a Form That Always Stays on Top

• Microsoft Visual Basic Professional and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 4.0, 5.0, 6.0

SUMMARY

Microsoft Visual Basic does not offer a property or method to make a form the topmost window. This behavior can be achieved using the SetWindowPos Win32 API.

This article demonstrates how to set a form as the topmost window using the SetWindowPos Win32 API.

MORE INFORMATION

The sample code below uses a function called SetTopMostWindow. The SetTopMostWindow function sets a window as a topmost Window or as a normal Window, based on the two parameters, hwnd and Topmost, passed to it.

The hwnd parameter specifies the handle of the window to be set as topmost or as normal.

The Topmost parameter specifies whether to set the form as topmost or as normal. If the value is true, the function sets the form to always remain on top. If the value is false, the function sets the form as a normal window.

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.



2. Add two command buttons (Command1 and Command2) to Form1.



3. Set the caption property of Command1 to "Always on top."



4. Set the caption property of Command2 to "Normal."



5. Put the following code in the Form1 Declaration section:
   

   
         Option Explicit
   
         Private Sub Command1_Click()
            Dim lR As Long
            lR = SetTopMostWindow(Form1.hwnd, True)
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub Command2_Click()
            Dim lR As Long
            lR = SetTopMostWindow(Form1.hwnd, False)
         End Sub
    




6. On the Project menu, click Add Module, to add a new module to the project.



7. Add the following code to the new module:
   

   
         Option Explicit
         Public Const SWP_NOMOVE = 2
         Public Const SWP_NOSIZE = 1
         Public Const FLAGS = SWP_NOMOVE Or SWP_NOSIZE
         Public Const HWND_TOPMOST = -1
         Public Const HWND_NOTOPMOST = -2
   
         Declare Function SetWindowPos Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowPos"  _
               (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
               ByVal hWndInsertAfter As Long, _
               ByVal x As Long, _
               ByVal y As Long, _
               ByVal cx As Long, _
               ByVal cy As Long, _
               ByVal wFlags As Long  ) As Long
   
         Public Function SetTopMostWindow(hwnd As Long, Topmost As Boolean) _
            As Long
   
            If Topmost = True Then 'Make the window topmost
               SetTopMostWindow = SetWindowPos(hwnd, HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, _
                  0, FLAGS)
            Else
               SetTopMostWindow = SetWindowPos(hwnd, HWND_NOTOPMOST, 0, 0, _
                  0, 0,FLAGS)
               SetTopMostWindow = False
            End If
         End Function
    




NOTE: In the above sample code, an underscore (_) at the end of a line is used as a line-continuation character.


8. Press F5 to run the project.

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q81137 : How to Create a Topmost Window

Q84251 : How to Create a Topmost or Floating Window in Visual Basic

Q150233 : BUG: Topmost Window Does Not Stay on Top in Design Environment

Additional query words: always on top topmost splash screen SetWindowPos kbVBp400
kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbWinAPI

Keywords : kbGrpVB
Version :
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto