Windows provides a great deal of information about the screen and the objects displayed on the screen, such as icons and windows. The NonClientMetrics class includes information about the window borders, but the Screen class contains properties and methods that work with the screen and icons.
Although the Screen class (SCREEN.CLS) exposes a large number of properties, they’re all quite simple. Each read-only property (see Table 9.20) provides a single piece of information about the screen, such as the width or height of the screen or the minimum height or width of a window. Table 9.20 also includes the single write-only property of the Screen object, the DeskWallPaper property. All the properties in this table except the DeskWallPaper property return long integers; you supply a string to the DeskWallPaper property indicating the wallpaper you’d like to use. Table 9.21 includes a list of the read/write properties supplied by the Screen object, including the datatype to specify for each property.
Table 9.22 lists the two methods of the Screen class. The GetWorkArea and SetWorkArea methods allow you to retrieve and set the work area Windows uses. That is, you can specify the coordinates used by a maximized window, if you’d like.
Table 9.20: Screen Class Read-Only Properties
| Property | Description |
| FullScreenX | Width of the inside area of a full-screen window. Use GetWorkArea to get the portion of the screen not obscured by docked trays |
| FullScreenY | Height of the inside area of a full-screen window. Use GetWorkArea to get the portion of the screen not obscured by docked trays |
| IconSizeX | Default width, in pixels, for an icon |
| IconSizeY | Default height, in pixels, for an icon |
| IconSpacingX | Width, in pixels, of grid cells for items in Large Icon view |
| IconSpacingY | Height, in pixels, of grid cells for items in Large Icon view |
| KanjiWindow | For DBCS versions of Windows, height in pixels of the Kanji window |
| MaximizedX | Width, in pixels, of a maximized top-level window |
| MaximizedY | Height, in pixels, of a maximized top-level window |
| MaxTrackX | Default maximum width, in pixels, of a window that has a caption and sizing borders |
| MaxTrackY | Default maximum height, in pixels, of a window that has a caption and sizing borders |
| MenuCheckX | Width, in pixels, of the default menu check-mark bitmap |
| MenuCheckY | Height, in pixels, of the default menu check-mark bitmap |
| MinimizedX | Width, in pixels, of a normal, minimized window |
| MinimizedY | Height, in pixels, of a normal, minimized window |
| MinimumX | Minimum width, in pixels, of a window |
| MinimumY | Minimum height, in pixels, of a window |
| MinSpacingX | Width, in pixels, of a grid cell for minimized windows |
| MinSpacingY | Height, in pixels, of a grid cell for minimized windows |
| MinTrackX | Minimum tracking width, in pixels, of a window |
| MinTrackY | Minimum tracking height, in pixels, of a window |
| ScreenX | Width of the screen, in pixels |
| ScreenY | Height of the screen, in pixels |
| SmallIconX | Recommended width for a small icon |
| SmallIconY | Recommended height for a small icon |
| DeskWallPaper | (Write-only) Sets desktop wallpaper. Supply a string containing a file name, or “(None)” to display no wallpaper. To get the wallpaper value, look in the Registry’s HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WallPaper key |
Table 9.21: Screen Class Read/Write Properties
| Property | Datatype | Description |
| MinAnimation | Boolean | State of minimize animation. If False, Windows doesn’t display animation as you minimize a window. Setting this property to False makes Windows appear to run faster |
| DragFullWindows | Boolean | Determines whether dragging of full windows is enabled. If True, Windows displays the entire window contents as you move the window. If False, it displays only a border |
| FontSmoothing | Boolean | Indicates whether the font-smoothing feature is enabled |
| GridGranularity | Long | Granularity value of the desktop sizing grid. This granularity establishes how much control you have over the size of windows: the larger this setting, the fewer options you have |
| IconHorizontalSpacing | Long | Width of an icon cell |
| IconVerticalSpacing | Long | Height of an icon cell |
| IconTitleWrap | Boolean | Turns icon-title wrapping on or off |
| IconFontName | String | Font name for icons |
| IconFontSize | Long | Icon font size |
| MenuDropAlignment | Boolean | Alignment of pop-up menus. Specify True for right alignment and False for left alignment (the normal state) |
Table 9.22: : Screen Class Methods
| Method | Description |
| GetWorkarea | Gets the size of the work area. The work area is the portion of the screen not obscured by the taskbar |
| SetWorkArea | Sets the size of the work area. The work area is the portion of the screen not obscured by the taskbar |