Using Pop-up Dialogs that Are Always Visible

In the previous tip we used an old COM technique to display a pop-up box with a built-in timeout. That worked pretty well except that the dialog box can be covered under your PowerShell window at times.

Keep PowerShell Dialog Boxes Always on Top

With a little-known trick, you can make sure the dialog box will always open on top of all other windows:

$shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
$value = $shell.Popup("You can't cover me!", 5, 'Example', 17 + 4096)

"Choice: $value"

Key is to add 4096 to the argument that controls buttons and icons. This turns the dialog into a system-modal dialog: it is guaranteed to open on top of all existing windows and can never be covered.

Hash tables

Using hash tables to wrap all these cryptic constants is again the way to go:

$timeoutSeconds = 5
$title = 'Example'
$message = "You can't cover me!"

$buttons = @{
  OK               = 0
  OkCancel         = 1  
  AbortRetryIgnore = 2
  YesNoCancel      = 3
  YesNo            = 4
  RetryCancel      = 5
}

$icon = @{
  Stop        = 16
  Question    = 32
  Exclamation = 48
  Information = 64
}

$clickedButton = @{
  -1 = 'Timeout'
  1  = 'OK'
  2  = 'Cancel'
  3  = 'Abort'
  4  = 'Retry'
  5  = 'Ignore'
  6  = 'Yes'
  7  = 'No'
}

$ShowOnTop = 4096

$shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
$value = $shell.Popup($message, $timeoutSeconds, $title, $buttons.Ok + $icon.Exclamation + $ShowOnTop)

Switch ($clickedButton.$value)
{
  'OK'    { 'you clicked OK' }
  'Timeout'{ 'you did not click anything, timeout occurred' }
}  

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