Detecting the Alt state

[shree]

In my application, I would like to change the icon when the user presses Alt (Alt only, no other character, so i cannot use the KeyDown Event). How do I do it?

I plan to use a global boolean variable AltPressed and a timer that ticks every 100 ms, and use GetKeyState in each timer tick to detect the Alt State.

Is there a neater solution?

[Nanderson]

Another choice would be to make a keyboard hook, so that all key events are seen by the hook. That way you can ignore all non-Alt key events and then toggle your global variable on the Alt events. I have recently been looking into keyboard hooks for another project and I have a couple of good sites to check out depending on what you want to do.

If you want a local hook [only recieves keystrokes from within your application], take a look here:
http://vbaccelerator.com/codelib/hook/vbalhook.htm

If you need a system wide hook, I found a neat control that will do it:
http://www.scottandmichelle.net/scot...mv?codenum=082

Hope this helps.

Nathan

[shree]

Thanks,

And I got hooked onto something else there - the Cool Menu. I was looking for a method to make my menus better.