https://github.com/rossy/borderless-window

A minimal borderless window with the Windows API
https://github.com/rossy/borderless-window

borderless c cc0 public-domain windows windows-api windows-desktop

Last synced: 5 days ago
JSON representation

A minimal borderless window with the Windows API

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/rossy/borderless-window
• Owner: rossy
• Created: 2016-06-28T12:14:29.000Z (over 8 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2023-10-27T10:25:08.000Z (over 1 year ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-01-29T18:07:37.065Z (13 days ago)
• Topics: borderless, c, cc0, public-domain, windows, windows-api, windows-desktop
• Language: C
• Size: 26.4 KB
• Stars: 322
• Watchers: 8
• Forks: 24
• Open Issues: 2
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

Awesome Lists containing this project

• AwesomeCppGameDev - borderless-window

README

        
borderless-window

=================

Many Windows applications choose to remove the system window borders on their

main window. The naive way of doing this is to create a popup window (with the

WS_POPUP style) instead of an overlapped window, however popup windows are more

suited to things like splash screens and other overlays, not main application

windows. They lack a number of useful behaviours such as window snapping and

the window menu, so they can be frustrating for users who expect these

behaviours.

The proper way to create a borderless application window is to create a regular

overlapped window and remove the borders by expanding the client area. This is

what Office, Visual Studio, iTunes and UWP CoreWindows do, however doing this

exposes some quirks in the windowing system that must be worked around in each

application.

**borderless-window** is a minimal demonstration of how to work around these

quirks. It creates a window that:

- Works with window snapping, including double-click to snap vertically

- Works with Aero Flip 3D

- Obeys the "minimize all" command (Win+M)

- Obeys the cascade and tile commands

- Shows a window menu when Alt+Space is pressed

- Does not cover the taskbar when maximized

- Does not disable auto-hide taskbars when maximized

- Casts a drop-shadow, like other top-level windows

- Has hide, show, maximize, minimize and restore animations, like other

  top-level windows

- Can be resized by the user

- Does not accumulate visual corruption in the client area from the hidden

  window borders when the window is activated, the window text is changed or

  the window menu is opened

Building

--------

A Makefile is included for mingw-w64 GCC. The C source should also compile in

Visual Studio 2015 with a recent Windows SDK. The generated binary should be

compatible with Windows Vista and up. It will not work unmodified on Windows XP

due to the hard dependency on dwmapi.dll.

Copying

-------

This project is a demonstration of something simple that is made unnecessarily

difficult by quirks in the Windows API. In order to be as useful as possible to

as many application developers as possible, it is placed in the public domain.

Attribution would be appreciated, but is not required (after all, this stuff

should have been documented by Microsoft.)

To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all copyright

and related and neighboring rights to this software to the public domain

worldwide. This software is distributed without any warranty.

[![CC0](http://i.creativecommons.org/p/zero/1.0/80x15.png)](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)