[Atrociouss]

I'm teaching myself PInvoke, and the only thing I could come up with to teach myself this was a screen capture program. Yes, I know, there are many out there, but this is for my own education not public use.

Currently i'm only using the User32.dll functions

WindowFromPoint(Point)
WindowFromPoint(Int, Int)
GetWindowText(IntPtr, StringBuilder, Int)
GetWindowTextLength(IntPtr)
GetWindowRect(HandleRef, RECT) 'RECT is a custom structure consisting of 4 integers
GetDesktopWindow() 'IntPtr of the desktop, using as a test for drawing.

What i'm doing with this is eventually I'm going to do what programs like SnagIt do, draw a box around the window under the mouse, and on click take the screenshot.
I've got the screenshot method down, I'm able to find the window under the mouse, but I am unable to efficiently draw on the screen.

I've been thinking of different ways to do this but the only one worth mentioning won't work.
Take a screenshot of the entire screen, display in form, wait for user to select crop area.
This would work if I wasn't trying to take an image of the specific window. I would need to implement border detection in GDI functions and i'm just not that smart haha, I don't even know where to begin with that one.

All GDI drawing over the desktop hWnd is unresponsive and glitchy, simply moving my mouse over a control that activates anywhere will clear the entire window's paint.
The last method I used:

    Dim brush As New Drawing2D.HatchBrush(Drawing2D.HatchStyle.DashedDownwardDiagonal, Color.Red, Color.Black)
    Dim screenRect As Rectangle = GetRect(GetDesktopWindow)

    Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)
        MyBase.OnPaint(e)
        Using g As Graphics = Graphics.FromHwnd(GetDesktopWindow)
            g.FillRectangle(brush, screenRect)
        End Using
    End Sub

It's also a tad slow?

I guess my question is, is there a way to draw on the screen without it being glitchy? There as to be, there are programs out there that do it.


While typing this out, I realized developers must have found a way to lock current screen updates and are drawing using gdi over the locked screen; no updates means no activated controls, but i still don't see how they are getting windows from locked controls with GetWindowRect/GetWindowAtPoint etc. BUT, No updates also means no GDI rendering? I shall look into this a little more, but if there are more constructive answers I certainly need the help!







Thanks

Atrociouss