>>>>>Hi Rick
>>>>>
>>>>>I turned off the animation and removed the read events. I want this as a static mask in front of the .screen or current form. It's awfully close. I added a DOEVENTS after running your code. That made the form appear fully formed rather than as a ghostly apparition. The form also stays centered and in front.
>>>>>
>>>>>My hope was to show the progress bar through the transparent window. Then most of the progress bar's native ugliness would be hidden and replaced with something much more attractive. It almost works. I'm thinking the issue is to make rectform really topmost in the windows zorder or at least to make vfp one zorder back from it.
>>>>>
>>>>>Any ideas on that?
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>If you can get the HWND of the progress bar window you want it to be placed in front of, you can use the SetWindowPos() function to manually place it ahead in the ZOrder of a given window.
>>>
>>>The native progress bar "window" may not even be an actual window. It's been in VFP and as far as I remember even FP for DOS.
>>>
>>>> You may also be able to read the exact location of sub-windows within to get the literal rectangle of the progress bar portion, and if so you can position your window exactly, rather than closely, to its correct location (based on variable user border widths, and so on).
>>>
>>>That seems a good suggestion. Timing is another issue. Once we start an SQL command, we can't access the environment of the progress bar.
>>>
>>>I tried SetForeGroundWindow on the rectform but that didn't seem to do it either.
>>>
>>>It's possible I might have to live with having the vfp native progress bar ahead of some other window, but I really thought I was on to something. I was imagining a nifty cloud shaped form with the progress bar racing through it. This native bar is much faster than anything we might write.
>>
>>
>>Ah ... now I see which one you are referring to. Yes, Visual FoxPro owns its own DC and draws its own windows without using child windows. It is difficult to workaround for custom apps.
>>
>>Yes, setting Rectform as top-level form would be a good feature. You can use some of Cesar's capture-screen-to-disk features to capture the image immediately behind the Rectform, and then use it as the background image, and then give it no border and hide the title bar (so it looks like it's completely see-through), but then place the hole in the middle so only that portion of the query progress bar shows through.
>>
>>Lots of possibilities... depends on how far you want to go.
>
>My attempts so far have VFP putting the native progress bar "window" in front of the rectform. The other trick is you have to have a big enough data set for the progress bar to appear. It seemed so easy! :)
>
>Oh well. I'll have to let it percolate.


Lauch rectform as another process, and put it always on top. Pass the hwnd of your first process's form, and send messages back and forth to coordinate movement, and termination.