Flickering/blinking openvpn-gui sys tray icon tooltip on mouseover if taskbar is on top of the screen

[TotoCon]

For some reason i cannot post on the forums, so i'll try here:

I have the taskbar on top of the windows desktop.
When i move my mouse on the gui sys tray icon, the tooltip flickers/blinks.
I think the mouseover event tries to place the tooltip above the icon but fails to do so.
This does not happens if the taskbar is left/right or at the bottom of the screen.

[selvanair]

I can reproduce this but not consistently. With taskbar at the top, for some mouse positions the flicker is present not for some other. I think its caused by the popup overlapping with mouse which leads the system to send repeated NIM_ POPUPCLOSE and OPEN messages.

Since commit 0c9ae87 we use a custom window for tray tooltip instead of NIF_TIP as the latter has a limited in text length. But that makes it necessary to carefully position this window depending on the trackbar location and size. If anyone has ideas on how to do this better than in the above commit, please share. Note that we can only use win32 API.

[TotoCon]

Just want to add, that all other tooltips are placed directly attached to the taskbar.
If the taskbar is on top, the tooltips are placed derictly below it.
If placed on the right, tooltips are shown attached left to the taskbar.
If on the left, tooltips are shown attached right to the taskbar.
And if the taskbar is at the bottom, the tips are shown attached directly above the taskbar.

[selvanair]

Just want to add, that all other tooltips are placed directly attached to the taskbar. If the taskbar is on top, the tooltips are placed derictly below it. If placed on the right, tooltips are shown attached left to the taskbar. If on the left, tooltips are shown attached right to the taskbar. And if the taskbar is at the bottom, the tips are shown attached directly above the taskbar.

I have noticed this behaviour of built-in tray icons except when the taskbar is on the bottom. For that case only, the positioning appears right above the mouse and not in line with the taskbar boundary. Not very consistent. In any case, I have not found a win32 API call that will do this automatically so that we can inherit the behaviour of system icons. When we used to use NIF_TIP, positioning was automatic, but then our text often gets truncated which is the reason for using a custom window.

Also, for left and right positions, our current style looks better especially when the taskbar gets wider. And for bottom, we position the tip well above the taskbar which looks good too.

I'll consider shifting it down for the top case.

[selvanair]

@TotoCon Could you check whether this one fixes it? The position is adjusted only when the taskbar is at top. 209725d

May be tested using exe from the CI artifact here: https://github.com/selvanair/openvpn-gui/actions/runs/11874383419#artifacts

Just extract to a temp folder and run the exe after stopping the currently running GUI.

[TotoCon]

@selvanair I can confirm that the tooltip works as it should if running the file you provided. No more flicker if taskbar on top.

[TotoCon]

@selvanair Just a quick question: Should i wait for a new version of the gui bundled with openvpn or can i use the modded one u provided a few days ago?

[selvanair]

@TotoCon That's up to you. Nothing wrong in using that build until a new release is out. But it's an unsigned executable, and depending on your set up you may see some warnings about untrusted applications.

[TotoCon]

@selvanair Thanks a lot. I tried it in a VM. Seems to cause no problems.