Detecting a new window

[Psibernetic]

I was wondering if there was a way to detect if a new window has opened, it may not always be an active window, I am attempting to provide transsparency to every application in Windows XP...I kno of WinList(), I could use that command every few secinds and compare data, but that would use far more cpu then wanted...any ideas?

[seandisanti]

I was wondering if there was a way to detect if a new window has opened, it may not always be an active window, I am attempting to provide transsparency to every application in Windows XP...I kno of WinList(), I could use that command every few secinds and compare data, but that would use far more cpu then wanted...any ideas?

WinList itself doesn't take up much cpu, you're just going to eat up time while you're looping through checking everything, BUT, you don't really need to loop through everything every time do you? I mean if you check the count, and only loop through when the count changes, you should be able to check more frequently with less impact. example:

#include<array.au3>
$thelist = WinList()
$count = $thelist[0][0]
While 1
$tmp = WinList()
$newCount = $tmp[0][0]
If $newCount > $count Then
    For $i = 1 to $newCount
        $found = 0
        For $j = 1 to $count
        If $thelist[$j][0] = $tmp[$i][0] Then
            $found = 1
            ExitLoop
        EndIf
        Next
        If Not $found Then 
            MsgBox(0,"New Window",$tmp[$i][0] & @CRLF & "is a new window")
            ExitLoop
        EndIf
    Next
    $thelist = $tmp
    $count = $newCount
EndIf
If $newCount < $count Then
    $thelist = $tmp
    $count = $newCount
EndIf   
Sleep(250)
ConsoleWrite(@CRLF & $count & " :: " & $newCount & @CRLF)
WEnd

that's barely tested at all, but it raises the cpu usage on my work computer about 2%

[Uten]

WinWaitNotActive(WinActive(""))

Obviously you can compare against a stored WinList array every time there is a change in the active window. That should pretty much reduce the CPU load towards 0%.