How to Create a Mouse Position Tool in Visual Basic

Submitted by GeePee on Sunday, April 26, 2015 - 23:35.

Introduction: Welcome to my tutorial on how to create a Mouse Position tool in Visual Basic. This is easy so I will also be explaining Threading. Steps of Creation: Step 1: First we need to import System.Threading so we can use Threads. We also want to create a form with just a label, this will contain our mouse position.

Imports System.Threading

Step 2: Now we want to create and initiate a Thread on form load...

CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls = False
Dim trd As Thread = New Thread(AddressOf begin)
trd.isBackground = True
trd.Start()

We also stop checking for illegal cross thread calls because if we don't, it will throw an error when trying to access the label1 control from a new thread because the control was created on the main thread. Step 3: Now we want to create our begin function which the new Thread starts on. We want it to update our label text with the mouse position so we put it in a constant loop.

Private Function begin()
    Do While True
        Label1.Text = "X: " & MousePosition.X & ", Y: " & MousePosition.Y
    Loop
End Function

Step 4: Finally, we want to add in a 0.1 second sleep between each loop of updating our label so it doesn't overuse resources from our computer etc.

Thread.Sleep(100)

Project Complete! Below is the full source code and download to the project files.

Imports System.Threading
Public Class Form1
    Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls = False
        Dim trd As Thread = New Thread(AddressOf begin)
        trd.isBackground = True
        trd.Start()
    End Sub
 
    Private Function begin()
        Do While True
            Label1.Text = "X: " & MousePosition.X & ", Y: " & MousePosition.Y
            Thread.Sleep(100)
        Loop
    End Function
End Class

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How to Create a Mouse Position Tool in Visual Basic

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