Mega Code Archive
How to create a animated (rotating) hourglass
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Title: How to create a animated (rotating) hourglass.
Question: when you have a prolonged job you can show a animated (rotating) hourglass as cursor. Here is the way how to do it.
Answer:
If your program has a prolonged job, you can show an hourglass in the meantime. When the job takes a very long time the user may still think the computer has given up. If it isn't possible to use a Progressbar, you can use a rotating hourglass. Therefore Windows has a file named hourglas.ani that you must load at the startup of your program. Pay attention that that the name is in the Dos 8.3-format, in which 'hourglas' is with one 's'.
This code snippet shows how to load the cursor in the OnCreate of your main-form:
procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
Screen.Cursors[1]:=
LoadCursorFromFile('C:\windows\cursors\hourglas.ani');
end;
Instead of using a 1 between the '['-brackets you can use any positive number (negative numbers and zero are used by Windows). For instance you use this number like:
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
Screen.Cursor:= 1;
//long time job
Screen.Cursor:= crDefault;
end;
If you have NT instead of Windows, the rotating hourglass will be in 'C:\winnt\cursors\hourglas.ani'.
If you have a program that is used by NT as well as Windows, it will be smart if the cursor is looked up in the right directory. This can be done as followed:
procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
var
sPath: array[0..MAX_PATH-1] of Char;
P: PChar;
begin
GetWindowsDirectory(sPath, SizeOf(sPath));
P:= PChar(IncludeTrailingBackslash(sPath)
+ 'cursors\hourglas.ani');
Screen.Cursors[1]:= LoadCursorFromFile(P);
end;
The function IncludeTrailingBackslash exists since Delphi 5. If you have an earlier version you must write some code yourself. If you have Delphi 6 you can use IncludeTrailingPathDelimiter which is compatible with Kylix.
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