Expert Advisor Property Window (Request)
Made it today upon another trader's request, see http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=299017 for description and download. Using the EA is more comfortable because it doesn't depend on ticks. Attach the EA or the indicator (NOT both - they do the same) to only one chart, even if you have more MetaTrader instances running. Expert properties in both normal and tester mode are handled, and custom indicators properties too. There are some pivot or harmonics indicators with very large parameter lists. See code comments on how it works.
Modding the open window style is not enough, the parent box gets resizable with mouse if you add WS_SIZEBOX to style and SC_SIZE to menu BUT you must move the controls inside the dialog box 'manually' [calling SetWindowPos(); didn't use MoveWindow() as it requires both coordinates and dimensions to be passed and that would be more complicated in this particular case]. The app doesn't listen to (unexpected) messages so the content doesn't keep up with resizing automatically.
The same happened when I tried to use third-party windows tools (only the parent window gets resized), with one exception: ResizeEnable freeware, released 2003, enables quick&dirty resizing of any window by simply resizing all the inner controls proportionally. Looks weird and ugly sometimes but it works too.
My solution should work just fine. I will post any updates in my FF thread listed above.However, it would be very nice if the guys at MetaQuotes surprise us and make it simply out-of-the-box in the next build.
Cheers :-)
Well done Mary Jane and thank you very much.
Mary Jane code base https://www.mql5.com/en/code/10354
- Free trading apps
- Over 8,000 signals for copying
- Economic news for exploring financial markets
You agree to website policy and terms of use
Nowadays, expert advisors have become more & more sophisticated with more variables. The expert property window in normal and optimization mode cannot be resize and the height is quite short for an expert advisor with common variables.
I used to mod the window but not able to do it now since the recent MT4 build is "packed".
And yes, resizing using third party programs could also do the job but I think the global expert property window should originally be resizable for convenience just like the object property window, etc.
Could MetaQuotes fulfill this small request? I'm sure this will be a great relief to lots of users out there. This will also make settings and typo error a thing of the past.
Else, I wonder if it could be done using sort of PostMessageA or WM_COMMAND.
OPForex