   [C++] Loading Screen
  This may be a stupid question, but anyway, I want to make a loading screen for my game in C++ like the one Visual Studio 2008 has.  What would be the best way to do this to make it look like that?   
  I'm not familiar with the loading screen in question, but generally what you do is have your program delay initializing important data until after it can pop up a special window/dialog box. Then the user gets to look at the box while you initialize data structures, load assets, and so on. If you feel like being fancy, you can have a line on the box that you can update with what you're currently doing. My project has a hook in the logger to automatically send any messages that are logged at higher than debug level to the box. It's quite handy.   ;  I think he means a window without a title bar.if so, while creating you're window (CreateWindow()) you can't use are WS_CAPTION, WS_SYSMENU, WS_MAXIMIZEBOX and WS_MINIMIZEBOX as style.   ;  That's what I mean.   ;  OK, I have this and it works:    hWnd = CreateWindow(  appname,  appname,  WS_POPUP, //WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS | WS_CLIPCHILDREN,  CW_USEDEFAULT,  CW_USEDEFAULT,  500,    500,  NULL,  NULL,  hInstance,  NULL);How do I make it where it doesn't have that app name on the task bar thing(at bottom of desktop) until I want it to?   ;  in that case you'll have to switch to CreateWindoxEx() and use WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW as dwExstyle. hWnd = CreateWindowEx(  WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW,  appname,  appname,  WS_POPUP, //WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS | WS_CLIPCHILDREN,  CW_USEDEFAULT,  CW_USEDEFAULT,  500,    500,  NULL,  NULL,  hInstance,  NULL);this is what the msdn has to say about preventing an app to show up in the taskbar to be complete ;)Quote:To prevent the window button from being placed on the taskbar, create the unowned window with the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW extended style. As an alternative, you can create a hidden window and make this hidden window the owner of your visible window.;  That works, but when I try to remove the load window, it removes the whole app:DestroyWindow(Load);Any other options?   ;Quote:Original post by Matthew ShockleyThat works, but when I try to remove the load window, it removes the whole app:*** Source Snippet Removed ***Any other options?Don't exit your app when your loading screen gets WM_DESTROY. I'm guessing your WM_DESTROY handler calls PostQuitMessage() or sets a flag to indicate that your app should exit?   ;  Evil Steve beat me to it. It sounds like you're WM_DESTROY message is calling PostQuitMessage() (as Steve said) which terminates your program.If so you could try something like this (in case WM_DESTROY with firstWindow initialised to true):if (!firstWindow) //Only quit if it's the main window being destroyedPostQuitMessage(0);elsefirstWindow = false;I haven't done any Windows programming in ages so please forgive me if that sounds stupid lol.   