Create tab blinking effect (like IM programs) using wxNotebook

Question

How can I Create Tab blinking effect like IM programs do using wxNotebook?

A good example of this is would be any tabbed IM program that blinks to show the user that they received a new IM.

Answer 1

You can give each tab an icon (using SetPageImage if i remember correctly). I did that in the past to show some progress bar. You could use it to draw a bitmap (wxMemoryDC) every time your timer triggers and update that image.

You can also use wxAuiNotebook. It doesn't use native widgets, but it's part of the AUI framework (adopted in wx2.8) and it allows modern things, like drag&drop of tabs. Of course it also has SetPageBitmap method.

You could either render a small led blinking, or you could draw the name of the contact on a colored background (whose color changes each blink interval) and use it itself as the icon instead of drawing the contact name next to the icon. The latter method only works using wxAuiNotebook if i recall correctly.

It's been some time since i did it, but it worked out very nicely.