How to bring my application to the front?

Question

I know all the reasons why it is a bad idea. I dislike it if an application steals input focus, but this is for purely personal use and I want it to happen; it will not dist

Answer 1

I am doing something similar in one of my applications and this function works for me in xp/vista/w7:

function ForceForegroundWindow(hwnd: THandle): Boolean;
const
  SPI_GETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT = $2000;
  SPI_SETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT = $2001;
var
  ForegroundThreadID: DWORD;
  ThisThreadID: DWORD;
  timeout: DWORD;
begin
  if IsIconic(hwnd) then ShowWindow(hwnd, SW_RESTORE);

  if GetForegroundWindow = hwnd then Result := True
  else
  begin
    // Windows 98/2000 doesn't want to foreground a window when some other
    // window has keyboard focus

    if ((Win32Platform = VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT) and (Win32MajorVersion > 4)) or
      ((Win32Platform = VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_WINDOWS) and
      ((Win32MajorVersion > 4) or ((Win32MajorVersion = 4) and
      (Win32MinorVersion > 0)))) then
    begin
      Result := False;
      ForegroundThreadID := GetWindowThreadProcessID(GetForegroundWindow, nil);
      ThisThreadID := GetWindowThreadPRocessId(hwnd, nil);
      if AttachThreadInput(ThisThreadID, ForegroundThreadID, True) then
      begin
        BringWindowToTop(hwnd); // IE 5.5 related hack
        SetForegroundWindow(hwnd);
        AttachThreadInput(ThisThreadID, ForegroundThreadID, False);
        Result := (GetForegroundWindow = hwnd);
      end;
      if not Result then
      begin
        // Code by Daniel P. Stasinski
        SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT, 0, @timeout, 0);
        SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT, 0, TObject(0),
          SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
        BringWindowToTop(hwnd); // IE 5.5 related hack
        SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);
        SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETFOREGROUNDLOCKTIMEOUT, 0, TObject(timeout), SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
      end;
    end
    else
    begin
      BringWindowToTop(hwnd); // IE 5.5 related hack
      SetForegroundWindow(hwnd);
    end;

    Result := (GetForegroundWindow = hwnd);
  end;
end;

Another solution is not to steal focus and just put the window TOPMOST in the z buffer:

procedure ForceForegroundNoActivate(hWnd : THandle);

begin
 if IsIconic(Application.Handle) then
  ShowWindow(Application.Handle, SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE);
 SetWindowPos(hWnd, HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOSIZE or SWP_NOACTIVATE or SWP_NOMOVE);
 SetWindowPos(hWnd, HWND_NOTOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOSIZE or SWP_NOACTIVATE or SWP_NOMOVE);
end;