How to reduce CPU usage when moving a component in a OnMouseMove event in Delphi 7?

Question

In a Delphi 7 application, I want to move a component following the mouse. I'm doing something like this:

procedure MyComponent.MouseMove(Sender: TObject;Shift: TShiftState; X, Y: Integer);
begin
  AnotherComponent.Top := X;
  AnotherComponent.Left := Y;
end;

When I move the mouse the CPU usage for the main core goes up to 100% on a recent PC.

Any idea or tick to reduce the CPU usage in this case ?

Answer 1

You could create a TTimer that polls the current mouse position every 0.10 seconds or so, then positions "AnotherComponent" according to the current mouse position.

Then you wouldn't fire your event for every pixel of mouse movement- you won't need any OnMouseMove event on your controlling component at all.

On my computer, this basically has no performance impact at all.

procedure TForm1.Timer1Timer(Sender: TObject);
var
  pt: TPoint;
begin
  //Is the cursor inside the controlling component?  if so, position some
  //other control based on that mouse position.

  GetCursorPos(pt);
  if MouseWithin(pt.x,pt.y,MyComponent,Form1.Left,Form1.Top) then begin
    //replace with whatever real positioning logic you want
    AnotherComponent.Top := pt.y;
    AnotherComponent.Left := pt.x;
  end;
end;

function TForm1.MouseWithin(mouseX, mouseY: integer;
  const comp: TWinControl; const ParentWindowLeft: integer;
  const ParentWindowTop: integer): boolean;
var
  absoluteCtrlX, absoluteCtrlY: integer;
begin
  //take a control, and the current mouse position.
  //tell me whether the cursor is inside the control.
  //i could infer the parent window left & top by using ParentwindowHandle
  //but I'll just ask the caller to pass them in, instead.

  //get the absolute X & Y positions of the control on the screen
  //needed for easy comparison to mouse position, which will be absolute
  absoluteCtrlX := comp.Left + ParentWindowLeft;
  absoluteCtrlY := comp.Top + ParentWindowTop +
    GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYCAPTION);

  Result := (mouseX >= absoluteCtrlX)
    and (mouseX < absoluteCtrlX + comp.Width)
    and (mouseY >= absoluteCtrlY)
    and (mouseY <= absoluteCtrlY + comp.Height);
end;