Outlook Express reacts when a Labwindows project is executed and finished.

[Wim S]

Hello,

I got reactions from colleagues using my software that Outlook Express behaves strangely when my software is launched or closed. Often even buttons disappear from the Outlook Express toolbar. After a few launches only the 'Create Mail' and the 'Send/Recv' buttons remain.

I created a tiny project that just waits for 3 seconds and then finishes. It's included in this message.

To see the behavior, open Outlook Express and make sure it remains visible when you launch the dummy program (you can launch it in debug mode)...

The dummy project doesn't seem to throw away toolbar buttons, but you can see them move and get larger and smaller.

I am using CVI 8.0 on a Windows XP platform.

Can anyone tell me how this is happening an how to avoid it?

Greetings,

Wim

[LuisG]

Wim,

I was able to see the same behavior you described. It happens with any project, and it even happens when you run the CVI environment itself.

I debugged the CVI startup code to see when exactly this happens, and I tracked it down to when CVI (or the CVI run-time engine) temporarily adds two fonts to the system that CVI ships with (for legacy reasons). Specifically, Outlook Express changes its toolbars when CVI posts a WM_FONTCHANGE to the system after adding the font (which is what CVI is supposed to do according to the Microsoft documentation for the AddFontResource win32 function).

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do. There's no workaround that I can think of. I tried removing the two fonts from disk, which will cause CVI to not send the message. And CVI will still start up successfully. But it displays an annoying error message as a result, and that's probably worse for your user than having Outlook change its icons.

In this case, it really seems that the fault lies with Outlook. I can't think of any good reason why Outlook would be reconfiguring its toolbar as a result of receiving a WM_FONTCHANGE notification.

Luis
NI

[Wim S]

Hello Luis,

thanks a lot for the information. I'll tell my colleagues