How to set in Win32 program to enable size being remembered

Question

I met this problem. I have a simple Win32 program which is like the boilerplate which I can get from selecting a "Win32 project" under Visual Studio 2010's "Template --> Visual C++".

I found all other Windows based program like Adobe Reader, Windows Explorer having the feature which is: you enlarging the main window to a new size and then select "Close" or "Exit" from File menu or system menu to close it, then you launch the program again, the main window would be of the size that you adjusted to last time. However that program I got from Visual Studio as the bootstrap does not have such feature.

I researched more on it but cannot find which setting in either WndClass or CreateWindow that I can tweak to make that happen. Does anyone know it, thank you for your help in advance.

Answer 1

The simplest way to do this is with the GetWindowPlacement() and SetWindowPlacement() functions. These manage the window size and state (minimized/maximized/restored) for you.

Call GetWindowPlacement() when you want to record your window's current state:

WINDOWPLACEMENT wp = {0};
wp.length = sizeof(wp);
if (GetWindowPlacement(hWnd, &wp))
{
    // save wp values somewhere...
}

You can then save the values of the WINDOWPLACEMENT structure somewhere in your program's configuration files - either in the registry or on disk.

To restore your window's information, load the saved values into the WINDOWPLACEMENT structure, then call the SetWindowPlacement() function:

if (values were previously saved)
{
    WINDOWPLACEMENT wp = {0};
    wp.length = sizeof(wp);
    // load wp values from somewhere...
    SetWindowPlacement(hWnd, &wp);
}

Answer 2

You will need to save the position (X, Y) and size (Height, Width) of the window yourself, and set those values when the program starts up again.

Depending on the nature of the program, you might set this in a configuration file, a registry key, or a database (among other options).