Chris Szurgot's Blog

I'm working with the ListView Control (in Details mode) and I'm frustrated. Functionally, it's a great tool. Fast and missing only one feature for what I'm doing (It doesn't raise an event when the FocusedItem changes which was easy enough to implement) But, it flickers something fierce. If you don't have an icon attached to the row, and you add or change a row, the first item flickers. When you have an icon attached to the row, the entire thing flickers, even if the row being added or updated is off-screen. It's truely enough to give one a headache. A full screen program clearing and redrawing the screen, a few times a second, just to update an icon.

I've tried everything I can to get it to not flicker. Begin/EndUpdate() doesn't work (lergely because it's only supposed to delay redraw while multiple updates are made, not changing the way updates are handled) I've tried DoubleBuffering, but the painting doesn't seem to be handled by the controls PaintMehod, I've even tried other List controls, but they are too slow when dealing with a full screen app.

And I've worked with the status bar, and an Owner Draw Panel to display a progress bar, and *it* flickers.

And Whidbey Technology Preview doesn't fix this.

So my biggest wish for Whidbey (besides all the ones already being implemented) is to fix the flicker issues of the controls. Please! Just to keep my cost of Aspririn down.

(Update: Just to be clear, AddRange doesn't work any better than Begin/EndUpdate() because the adds and updates are supposed to be separate. I've also tried LockWindowUpdate and WM_SETREDRAW. Nothing works because (I think) it's not the timing of the refresh, it's the refresh itself.)