Win32: How to draw outside my window?

Question

Looking at a Windows tooltips class hint window, i see that it draws its drop-shadow outside the hint window's actual rectangle.

Using SpyXX - i can get the tooltip's window rect, and class styles:

Rectangle:     (440, 229)-(544, 249), 104x20
Restored Rect: (440, 229)-(544, 249), 104x20
Client Rect:   (0, 0)-(104, 20), 104x20

You'll notice that the drop shadow you see is physically outside the window that's being drawn. How can i draw a shadow outside around my window, while being outside my window?

Note: The shadow is not drawn using the standard CS_DROPSHADOW class style. i've confirmed this experimentally, and can also see the class style's for the window in SpyXX; it does not use CS_DROPSHADOW:

Windows Styles:     94000001

    WS_POPUP        80000000
    WS_VISIBLE      10000000
    WS_CLIPSIBLINGS  4000000
    TTS_ALWAYSTIP          1

Extended Styles:    00080088

    WS_EX_LAYERED      80000
    WS_EX_TOOLWIN         80
    WS_EX_TOPMOST          8

So how can i draw outside my window?

Note: Trying to draw on the desktop DC is out. From Greg Schechter's Redirecting GDI, DirectX, and WPF applications:

Drawing To and Reading From the Screen -- Baaaad!

Lastly, since we're on the redirection topic, one particularly dangerous practice is writing to the screen, either through the use of GetDC(NULL) and writing to that, or attempting to do XOR rubber-band lines, etc. There are two big reasons that writing to the screen is bad:

It's expensive... writing to the screen itself isn't expensive, but it is almost always accompanied by reading from the screen because one typically does read-modify-write operations like XOR when writing to the screen. Reading from the video memory surface is very expensive, requires synchronization with the DWM, and stalls the entire GPU pipe, as well as the DWM application pipe.
It's unpredictable... if you somehow manage to get to the actual primary and write to it, there can be no predictability as to how long what you wrote to the primary will remain on screen. Since the UCE doesn't know about it, it may get cleared in the next frame refresh, or it may persist for a very long time, depending on what else needs to be updated on the screen. (We really don't allow direct writing to the primary anyhow, for that very reason... if you try to access the DirectDraw primary, for instance, the DWM will turn off until the accessing application exits)

Answer 1

You can't draw outside your window in the manner you describe.

If you right click your desktop then go to properties/appearance/effects and uncheck 'Show shadows under menus' ... you will no longer have the shadow.

Bottom line is that this is a product of the window manager not your program.

Answer 2

Q: How do you draw outside of one window? A: Draw inside another window!

First thing to note is that the tooltip class actually does use the CS_DROPSHADOW style - but note that this is a class style, not a window style, so you have to look at the Class tab in the Spy++ properties dialog to find it. You'll see that the tooltips_class32 windows does indeed have this - and a few others.

But that just leads to the next question - how does that work? Well, it seems that Windows implements this by creating a helper HWND to draw the shadow - presumably it's creating another popup window the same size and shape as the one it's shadowing, filling it with gray, placing it directly underneath the main window, and setting it as a WS_EX_LAYERED window so that the shadow can be transparent and fade out around the edges using alpha-blending. And there's nothing to stop you from using the same or similar techniques yourself if you want to add a different type of shadow effect to one of your own windows.

So, long story short: if you want to draw outside of your own window, create a helper transparent window in the general area that you want to draw on, and draw on that helper window instead.

--

Now, if you try to find one of these helper shadow windows in Spy++, you won't find much. Unlike the tooltip_class32 windows, which are long-lived and just hide/show themselves as needed, these shadow windows are a more elusive creature: they are only created for as long as needed, so you'd have to refresh Spy++ while there's a tooltip or popup menu or other window using the shadow present - and that's tricky, since most tooltips and menus will disappear as soon as you move the mouse to switch to Spy++. But it turns out that the tooltips on Spy++'s own toolbar will stick around: so start Spy++, hover over an item in the toolbar, and hit F5 to refresh the HWND tree while the tooltip and shadow are present. Now scroll down, and you should see the third and fourth visible HWNDs in the tree are the tooltip itself, and right after that, a SysShadow window. Unfortunately, since the tooltip and shadow have by now disappeared, if you attempt to get the properties dialog for that HWND, you'll get a get a blank property dialog with an 'Invalid Window' message. If you really want to poke around and see how that SysShadow works, what styles it itself uses and so on, you could create a target app with a long-lived popup that uses CS_DROPSHADOW that you can then explore in Spy++ at leisure.

(Finally, note that these shadows are a completely different thing than the shadows that you see when one app window is on top of another above another since Vista: this type of shadow is part of Aero Glass mode, and handled by the same Desktop Composition Manager that adds the glass titlebar effect, and it doesn't use or need helper windows to implement the shadows.)

Answer 3

I wouldn't be surprised if that shadow is intimately tied to the window manager itself; it is after all the window manager who decides what window gets to paint which parts of itself and when it can do it. I don't see it as rocket science to paint that shadow if control over all that is gained, which the window manager has.