DeskSpace and the ways of....

[dcyuri7]

How does DeskSpace work?
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZvr9BXBcL0 for example if you haven't used it before.

It's wonderful, but I'm much more interested in how it works.
It literally locks you out of the normal windows display, and renders a 3D set of bitmaps.
I'd rather work in 2D, but the method should still be the same for blocking access, and rendering your "application" until the user has selected an item....

For instance, a custom "Start Menu" that toggles over the HDC of screen when hotkey is pressed. Easy enough, but how does one render ontop of the screen and lock the pixels or lock the bitmap render of the HDC? Normally when you render to the HDC, especially when using SetPixel etc... It will refresh when you use move something in explorer.exe , like a window, or clicking/highlighting a button. Is it even possible to do this using GDI? Or does deskspace actually apply a 3D application that's un-exitable over the entire screen?
(I suppose TopDesk from Otaku would be a more specific example of what I want. All in 2D, and rendered over the screen HDC, until the user selects an item - I want to program something very similair)

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

[bitshifter420]

The trick is to write a shell hook.
Once you have that, you can make windows look and act any way you want.
Check out BBLean, it is an open source shell hook\replacement.
This is one of the smallest hooks out there.

[dcyuri7]

hey thanks a ton for the info. That's exactly what I was needing to research/type into google - "shell hook".

[fred100]

The trick is to write a shell hook.

No, it doesn't use a Shell hook...

[dcyuri7]

hmmm, well then how does one accomplish this task then? >.<