Solved how to create an on-screen alert on top of everything

[DaveKimble]

I want to monitor the status of my web server and mail server as seen by the WAN. The servers are running on machine A, with the monitoring shown on machine B on the same LAN, both running Win 7 Ult 32.

I have written a PHP script which resides on a remote server, that I invoke with a browser on B. It refreshes with a report every 5 minutes. It works OK. Occasionally it reports an error once, and then clears itself on refresh.

Now I want some kind of on-screen error alert that will be on top of whatever I am doing on B, preferably including the screensaver. I have misguidedly tried doing this with Javascript, which I now learn is banned from doing this. Some searches imply Win7 itself normally doesn't allow it either, but this can be over-ridden.

What is the best strategy ?

 

[DaveKimble]

SOLVED how to create an on-screen alert on top of everyt

The trick is to use Javascript to change the window's title bar on error,
and have an AutoHotKey script to watch out for a window with the title "Server Error" and bring that window to the front:

SetTitleMatchMode, 1 ; title starts with literal string
While true ; loop continuously
{
IfWinExist, Server Error ; if the window with title starts with string exists
{
; switch off screensaver here
WinActivate ; bring the window found above to the top
}
Sleep, 10000 ; repeat after a pause of 10 seconds
}

This uses 0.03% of CPU time.
This doesn't break out of the screensaver.
There are AHK scripts that do something like that, but not sufficiently well documented to use yet.