From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: August 18, 2005
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: alert on popups?
>
> Leo,
> Thank you in advance for your help. I hope that you can
> answer my question:
>
> I'm trying to figure out a way to send an alert to myself
> (e-mail, text message, instant message, .doesn't really
> matter) from my computer when certain pixels on my desktop
> get covered by some type of pop-up window. Here why I'm
> interested in this: I have a PC controlling a large-scale LED
> display. The way the LED display software works is that the
> PC's monitor is simply cloned and everything displayed in the
> upper-left corner (304 pixels by 224 pixels) of the PC's
> monitor is broadcast on the LED display. The problem is that
> I constantly have pop-up windows appearing on the PC (Norton
> Antivirus saying my subscription is running, for example) and
> that pop-up window gets broadcast onto the LED display until
> I check the monitor (which I can do remotely) and respond
> and/or move it off the field of vision. What I was thinking
> about doing was trying to receive an automatic alert should
> anything cover the border of pixels surrounding the previous
> dimensions. However, I'm not quite sure how to do that or
> even where to look. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Offhand I can't really think of a practical solution along
the lines that you're suggesting. I'm assuming you've attempted
to turn off the pop-up notification from all of the assorted
and offending apps.
What I would look into is setting the "always on top" setting
for the window(s) that you want displayed. Thus, presumably,
the popups would pop-under that, and not affect your display.
If you have access to the application, it's usually a bit
that is set for the application's primary window. Alternately,
there are tools that will allow you to add that setting after
the fact to existing apps. Here's one example:
http://www.actualtools.com/articles/detail.php?ID=920
Good luck!
Thanks for asking,
Leo
Article 719
| Category:
Hardware
