Keyboard

Discover how to make an on-screen keyboard.

The existing SendKeys class does not have a managed way to activate an external application. MSDN recommends that you should use the FindWindow and SetForegroundWindow APIs. However, this alone does not ensure that the desired application will have keyboard focus while the keys are being sent. This replacement module sends keys directly to the specified window without error.

Learn to capture and react to keyboard presses by your users. Paul discusses hooking into keyboard information using the Windows API and Visual Basic .NET.

To acquire a low-level hook into the keyboard, there is quite a bit of cryptic information involved. Paul makes it easy by showing you the several Windows API methods and the details for accomplishing this.

Paul covers ways that you can manage the keyboard state for Visual Basic 6 and VB .NET in his newest column.