Re: Re: Re: Windows 98: track the current user's idle time

We know this is possible (at least using undocumented API's) since Windows screensavers do this.

No they don't. Screensavers are launched by the system. So it's the system that keeps track of user activity.

And they just check their Windows messages, just like any normal Windows app, to detect if there's any mouse or keyboard activity, to know when to exit.

Comment on Re: Re: Re: Windows 98: track the current user's idle time

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 98: track the current user's idle time by flyingmoose (Priest) on Mar 24, 2004 at 18:51 UTC
No they don't. Screensavers are launched by the system. So it's the system that keeps track of user activity. I know this.... The screensaver doesn't know idle time, but the system that LAUNCHES the screensavers knows the idle time. Hence if you make your application into a screensaver (oh, the pain), you could be launched at a certain point in time... but man, that would be quite annoying work :)	[reply]

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Windows 98: track the current user's idle time
by flyingmoose (Priest) on Mar 24, 2004 at 18:51 UTC

No they don't. Screensavers are launched by the system. So it's the system that keeps track of user activity.

I know this.... The screensaver doesn't know idle time, but the system that LAUNCHES the screensavers knows the idle time. Hence if you make your application into a screensaver (oh, the pain), you could be launched at a certain point in time... but man, that would be quite annoying work :)

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