Is this way of making an XNA game window borderless safe to use for various Windows PCs?

Question

I have found a way to simply make an XNA 4.0 game's window borderless. Here is the code from the article:

IntPtr hWnd = this.Window.Handle;
var control = System.Windows.Forms.Control.FromHandle( hWnd );
var form = control.FindForm();
form.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None;
form.WindowState = System.Windows.Forms.FormWindowState.Maximized;

You add it to the Game's constructor and it works perfectly. I tested it on several Windows PCs and it's great: the game runs seemingly in full screen, even if you set the game's resolution lower/higher than your desktop one. The only issue I had with it is the fact that you need to provide positions for XNA's SpriteBatch methods (Draw and DrawString) in desktop resolution, not in game's resolution, while retrieving width/height from GraphicsDevice gives you the latter.

At the same time, DOTA 2 has borderless window option, but the game scales the window down, if your requested in-game resolution is lower than your desktop one. I wonder if they have a good reason for doing this?

I wanted to ask if this approach is safe to use on PC or can it be buggy occasionally? I would especially like to know if it will work with Windows XP as I don't have a pc with this system to test it.

Answer 1

form.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None;
form.WindowState = System.Windows.Forms.FormWindowState.Maximized;

The MSDN documentation does a good job of listing the platforms supported for each function.

form.FormBorderStyle MSDN Documentation

Platforms

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

form.WindowState MSDN Documentation

Platforms

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

Answer 2

Since this is a basic function, it should be safe, but you should look into setting up a VM or finding a friend with an XP machine so that you can specifically test for it.

Answer 3

This functionality is pretty basic for Win32 API, you are pretty safe to use it on XP (and even below).

The OS support for FormBorderStyle enumeration (on .NET 3.5), for example:

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC

same goes for FormWindowState. I hope that edit makes answer more useful.