Unofficial Mojo FAQ

[Moorea]

example of what I mean for standard (windows7) widget overlay :

[Freddie]

in windowed mode, I can have for instance a 20% opaque/transparent clock widget on top of my wow windows (always on top; opacity 20%) - so rather than manipulate the OS cursor, can you plug in that way maybe ? and yes I meant the shape drawn doesn't have to be what the actual custom cursor from the game would be and maybe just a simple cross hair instead - if that makes the problem simpler

ps: that opacity setting, assuming its an OS support, could be a good way to easily overlay the status window maybe ? the alternative is however the volume controls show up sometime (green bars on top of the screen)

This is the kind of thing I was getting at when I talked about reading the MSDN docs for new DWM/DirectX stuff in Vista and Win 7.

Traditionally (up until Vista) a program would have done what you describe by making a window that looks like a cursor. (Programs paint their own windows so if Mojo wants to make a window that looks like a cursor, that's not a problem.) The program would have set the window to be always on top and moved the window whenever the cursor moves.

There would have been two problems with this. (1) It's too slow for a cursor. (2) As the fake cursor moves it will leave visible artifacts behind itself that eventually get redrawn, but not immediately.

Starting in Vista, Microsoft rewrote the way windows get drawn. Depending on system settings and video hardware, everything on the desktop is now handled as double-buffered DirectX surfaces (the same way games draw themselves). Some of this new code gets used automatically (without an application necessarily knowing anything about it) and some of it is exposed to applications through new APIs that they have to call deliberately.

It's possible that some of this new stuff could make this practical, but I don't know because I haven't used it or read its documentation carefully.

The appearance of the cursor doesn't matter -- if this is doable, the drawing could be anything.

[Freddie]

ps: that opacity setting, assuming its an OS support, could be a good way to easily overlay the status window maybe ? the alternative is however the volume controls show up sometime (green bars on top of the screen)

It's easy to overlay an image. It's easy to make the overlaid image translucent. There are APIs in Windows that allow applications to do these things, and they have been in Windows for years.

The problems are (1) moving the overlay as fast as a cursor moves and (2) not creating visual artifacts as it moves.

If you're willing to hook DLLs and go outside the normal OS APIs, it's a different story. I assume that's what Innerspace does. But that's not practical for Mojo.

Edit: Or if you wrote your own device driver and manipulated video hardware directly -- I guess that's a theoretical possibility but it's not practical.

If I'm overlooking something, somebody please tell me!

[Freddie]

The problems are (1) moving the overlay as fast as a cursor moves and (2) not creating visual artifacts as it moves.

I just realized, given the changes in Vista and Win 7, if the new DWM stuff is enabled and video card is present, these things may not be a problem anymore, especially in Win 7, especially with a fast video card.

I'll put a test implementation in Mojo so we can see.

[Moorea]

cool, looking fwd to it ! thx

(and I don't know anything about windows programing so I can't help you confirm/deny any of this - sorry!)

[Fursphere]

Ok, I've done two things:

1) I went through every "mojo" related thread I could find and took note of the features requested by various users.
2) hijacked post #2 in this thread (it was "reserved and not being used" and consolidated the information there

If I missed something - or even missrepresented something, please let me know!

[Freddie]

Ok, I've done two things:

1) I went through every "mojo" related thread I could find and took note of the features requested by various users.
2) hijacked post #2 in this thread (it was "reserved and not being used" and consolidated the information there

If I missed something - or even missrepresented something, please let me know!

Thanks. This is a big help. I'll use it to decide what to do next.

[Moorea]

Thanks Fur - I just updated the first post to be uptodate (a lot of the "this doesn't work" wasn't the case anymore; which is great progress) - and also edited the second one - adding some "meta questions" on some of the requests which are unclear to me

launching wow, startup items, etc... are maybe all nice to have but they don't prevent using the tool; they are just convenience - dot not pass and mouse click broadcasting (and slightly lesser extent maximizer) are imo deal breakers which prevent using mojo so I really think they should get top priority

[Freddie]

dot not pass and mouse click broadcasting (and slightly lesser extent maximizer) are imo deal breakers which prevent using mojo so I really think they should get top priority

If one or both of you want to editorialize and put remarks like that in the list, that's fine.

Anything that gives me guidance about prioritizing is good.

Or keep it in order to reflect what people are saying?

I don't want to ask you to do a lot of work, just saying that would help.

[Moorea]

Am I doing something wrong or is focus follow actually not in the current build ? seems like I need to click when I disable window broadcast for the input to get to the correct window ? can you make the hkn focus follow be the default behavior (with maybe some setting to leave it alone) ? (or is in a preference I missed in some of the setting window)

Thanks