How can I tell my application window is the foreground window

Question

I have the following problem: I want to be able to tell if my application window is the foreground window in Windows. I am using C#, .Net Framework 3.5 on Windows XP.

I actually can think of two ways to do what I am after

1. Use pinvoke, GetForeGroundWindow and compare the returned hWnd to the hWnd of my form
2. Check if Form.ActiveForm is null or an object reference

Method 1 seems OK, but I would rather not use pinvoke unless I have to. I am not entirely sure about method 2 although it seems to work OK.

Which method should I use, is there any other way?

Answer 1

It appear ActiveForm is application specific.

If you want to know if/when your form is the active form for the entire OS, you are stuck with API and a hWnd compare.

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport( "user32.dll" )]    
public static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();