once you have the event, you can read out the
current screensize (already works), and update the positions of
your panels (and whatever else needs to be adapted)

no, screen_size is the engine resolution. it doesn't change if you resize the window but the rendered image gets distorted. this isn't wanted in most cases.

so in the event i would like to get the space that is available for the directx surface like that:

What do you mean by "space that is available for the directx surface"?

You can just call video_set and use the desktop resolution through sys_metrics, minus the border. There is no special space for DirectX surfaces. All modern 3D cards can use the full desktop for the frame buffer. How fast this will render is another question.

i mean the space which is available in the window for the a7 engine. "directx surface" was the wrong term for that.

can i get the window size too? i would like to have the window working properly in all cases (resizing to arbitrary sizes by dragging the border and maximizing).

i saw some threads where people claimed that the border size you can get with sys_metrics isn't reliable with some windows versions?

but if this works flawlessly with the sys_metric values then it's fine.



another important function which came to my mind is trapping the mouse to the engine window. there are some user contributions which use the win32 api for that. i haven't tried them but according to some responses they also don't seem to be reliable in all cases. so it would be great if the engine provided a built-in function for that.

http://www.conitec.net/beta/on_maximize.htm

thanks for adding this!

could you also add an option for WS_MAXIMIZE so that an application can start maximized?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632600%28VS.85%29.aspx