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300

answers:

1

I'm trying to show a context menu when I left-click a NotifyIcon. Just calling NotifyIcon.ContextMenuStrip.Show() doesn't work very well. A solution has been posted here before that calls a secret method using Reflection:

Dim mi As System.Reflection.MethodInfo = GetType(NotifyIcon).GetMethod("ShowContextMenu", Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance Or Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic)
mi.Invoke(Icon, Nothing)

This works great, except that I also need to control where the menu is shown. I want to wait for the SystemInformation.DoubleClickTime to elapse between receiving the NotifyIcon.MouseUp event and displaying the menu, so that I can handle single-clicks and double-clicks separately. But invoking the ShowContextMenu method displays the menu at the current mouse position when ShowContextMenu is called, not when the icon was actually clicked. Which means that if the mouse moved during the DoubleClickTime, the menu will be displayed in a different part of the screen. So if I can control where the menu is shown, I can just save the mouse coordinates when I receive the MouseUp event, and then I can ensure that the menu is displayed near the icon. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks in advance.

A: 

Well, I just discovered that there are existing programs that exhibit this same behavior. I just went through all the icons in my system tray and about half of them do it. If you left-click the icon and then move the mouse during the delay before the menu appears, the menu will appear at the last mouse location, wherever that is on the screen. Snagit is one application that does this. Outlook is the only program in my tray that always shows the menu where I clicked the icon. But Snagit looks like it's using a .NET ContextMenuStrip, while Outlook is probably using a native menu.

So either this is standard behavior, or it's a problem that no one else has been able to solve either. And as a user, I've never noticed this behavior until yesterday when I was testing my own application. So I guess it's not that big of a deal and I won't worry about it.

Shawn O'Hern