Closing out a animated context menu from any active screen

[bob2oneil]

I have written an application in QtCreator using standard widgets and animation content where the GUI mimics very closely that of modern smartphones (i.e. kinectic scrolling lists, animated screen transitions, integrated editors, etc.). I have a sliding content menu similar to a modern smartphone based on the use of an external command button. I want to close out this menu whenever the user presses anywhere in the application area. Mouse clicks within the content menu are handled with a button selection. However, I need to also hide the content menu if the user presses the mouse anywhere in the application area. The application has a dozen or more screens which could be active at any time with the content menu. Some of these screens have additional nesting, such as context specific editors, with individual widgets. This is show in the sample attached screenshot.

So my question is, what is the most efficient way of capture all mouse presses in the client area outside of the content menu itself. My preliminary implementation is to have each screen provide a signal within it's MousePress event, so the parent application can close out the content menu. However, I would prefer not having to implement this for each and every screen/form if there is a more efficient centralized way of doing it (from say the parent screen which contains the fixed header and footer components of the GUI).

It there a better way of implementing this other than having to add a mousePressEvent() handler to each child screen (or perhaps having each screen/form derive from a common base class containing this feature?).

Is there some form of mouse capture that can be performed when the context menu is made visible that could capture all mouse presses within the application, and then perhaps release this mouse capture upon menu closure. I need to eat the mouse press event outside the bounds of the context menu.

Since mouse presses may be frequent, I would prefer not to have to signal for each one.