How can I hide the little keyboard popup in Windows Mobile 6.5? (c#)

Question

I have an app that is essentially a wizard that goes through some dialog boxes. One of the forms has just a button on it that brings up the common \"take picture\" dialog.

Answer 1

This answer was taken from the following article http://beemobile4.net/support/technical-articles/windows-mobile-programming-tricks-on-net-compact-framework-12 (I have only added the using statements). I'm on Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic, .NET CF 3.5.

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

[DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string caption, string className);

[DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hwnd, int state);

[DllImport("coredll.dll")]
private static extern IntPtr GetWindow(IntPtr hWnd, uint uCmd);

private const int SW_HIDE = 0;
private const int SW_SHOW = 1;
private const int GW_CHILD = 5;

///         
/// Shows the SIP (Software Input Panel) button.        
///
static public void ShowHideSIP(int nShowOrHide)
{
    IntPtr hSipWindow = FindWindow("MS_SIPBUTTON", "MS_SIPBUTTON");
    if (hSipWindow != IntPtr.Zero)
    {
        IntPtr hSipButton = GetWindow(hSipWindow, GW_CHILD);
        if (hSipButton != IntPtr.Zero)
        {
            bool res = ShowWindow(hSipButton, nShowOrHide);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "SipShowIM")]
public static extern bool SipShowIMP(int code);

SipShowIMP(1); //Show the keyboard

SipShowIMP(0); //Hide the keyboard

That should do it :-)

Answer 3

I was also looking for the solution to hide the small keyboard icon (SIP icon) and I achieved this by using the FindWindowW and MoveWindow or SetWindowPos functions of coredll.dll and user32.dll

Declare the function we are interested in:

    [DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "FindWindowW", SetLastError = true)]
    private static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string lpClassName, string lpWindowName);

    [DllImport("coredll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
    private static extern bool SetWindowPos(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr hWndInsertAfter, int x, int y, int cx, int cy, uint uFlags);

Then find the handle to keyboard icon and call the SetWindowPos to hide it:

IntPtr hWnd = FindWindow(Nothing, "MS_SIPBUTTON");
SetWindowPos(hWnd, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, &H80);

Useful links:

1. P/Invoke - coredll.dll
2. Disable keyboard icon in Windows Mobile using VB.net
3. Manage SIP - skip to the bottom on this post and look for comments of user name Mark

EDIT

I had to modify this slightly to compile.

    const int SWP_HIDE = 0x0080;
    IntPtr hWnd = FindWindow(null, "MS_SIPBUTTON");
    SetWindowPos(hWnd, IntPtr.Zero, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_HIDE);