I'm using MSAA for some automation.
Unlike all other MSAA elements I cannot iterate over the children of the desktop window (even though I can get the count of windows with accChildCount).
So I'm looking for another way to get the context menu MSAA object. My latest idea is if I can get the HWND of the Context menu then I can use AccessibleObjectFromWindow to get the MSAA Object. The difficulty is, how do you get the HWND of the context menu?
Currently my only work around is using UIAutomation to retrieve the HWND, but I feel this may be quite wasteful... Are there any other Windows32 functions which can return a handle to the context menu?
MSDN says you can use FindWindowEx( NULL, NULL, MAKEINTATOM(0x8000), NULL ); to find the menu window.
Related
Im trying to scroll other program (PowerPoint 2013) by sending WM_HSCROLL,
and it will work only if I offer the correct LPARAM (not NULL) to SendMessage.
The value of LPARAM is dynamic, it will change if you close and open a new program.
Now I can only get its value by hooking WM_HSCROLL and clicking scroll bar manually.
// This is my code:
LPARAM lParam = 0x0a616c38; // Found by hooking WM_HSCROLL
SendMessage(hTarget, WM_HSCROLL, SB_LINERIGHT, lParam);
So is it possible to get the correct LPARAM programatically?
Many thanks!
p.s. The scroll bar is not a real window in PowerPoint 2013.
p.s. It returns 1 if I use GetScrollInfo(hTarget, SB_CTL, &scrollinfo), but all values inside scrollinfo are zero.
p.s. Office Home and Student 2013 Official Site
Did you try to call GetLastError?
GetScrollInfo will probably not work across process boundaries, so I would say that's why you're not getting valid values back.
The lParam value of a WM_HSCROLL message is either NULL for the standard window scroll bar, or the handle of the scroll control. The handle of the scroll control will obviously change every time the program is run, so you need to find that out yourself before you can reliably simulate scroll input.
To do this, you can use the FindWindowEx function to search the parent window (hTarget in your example) for child windows of class "SCROLLBAR". As you will probably find more than one scrollbar child window you'll need some way to tell them apart - most probably, via the window's GWL_ID value as this will probably not change from run to run.
When we use WindowFromPoint winapi function we usually can get the case, when Point specifies to some control within a window. And in such cases WindowFromPoint returns handle to that control, not to the window that handles that control.
For example in my small test application if I point to the "body" of chrome browser I get the control with class = Chrome_RenderWidgetHostHWND and its hwnd.
But what I need is to get the "parent" window for that control (which is obviously should be the chrome window).
Traverse the parents using GetAncestor() passing GA_PARENT. This differs from calling GetParent() which will return the owner if the window is a top-level window.
Can't you just use GetParent? Keep traversing until you find the desktop window.
I'd like to obtain the same values via code. However I'd like to obtain the top-most or root windows in the hierarchy
I seem to have got the Root Parent with
HWND rootWinHandle = GetAncestor(activatedWinHandle, GA_PARENT);
However I can't get the owner window correctly. Tried
HWND rootOwnerWinHandle = GetAncestor(activatedWinHandle, GA_ROOTOWNER);
For a particular modeless dialog, Spy++ returns the Main Exe window whereas the above line returns the input i.e. activatedWinHandle. Am I looking at the wrong api ?
I'd like to obtain this without MFC if possible... coz nothing else in my project requires it.
See the GW_OWNER flag for GetWindow.
The GetParent documentation states:
If the window is a child window, the return value is a handle to the parent window. If the window is a top-level window, the return value is a handle to the owner window.
Try GetParent(). I believe this will return the owner window of a window without the WS_CHILD style, and the parent window of a window with WS_CHILD.
Only bit of insight i can add it from Raymond Chen:
Remember that owner and parent are two
different things.
Modal dialogs disable their OWNERs.
All top-level windows have the desktop
as their PARENT.
From: What's so special about the desktop window?
Special demo (+src):
http://files.rsdn.ru/42164/parentowner.zip
screenshot: http://files.rsdn.ru/42164/parentowner.png
kero
I have this problem. I have an handler to the mainWindow of a certain application, and I want to simulate a keypress on that application...
I'm using sendMessage/postMessage api calls to do this. The reason why I don't use the .Net SendKeys function or the keybd_event of the win32 api, is that they simulate the keypress at a global level. In my case, I may have the application minimized and still want the keypress to be simulated.
The problem with sendMessage and postMessage is that you must pass the handler of the exact childwindow where you want the key to be pressed. For example, in notepad, if I send the key to the mainWindow, nothing happens, I have to send the key to the child window that basically consists of the white canvas where you can write.
With msPaint for example, if a user creates a new document, and opens a textbox in that drawing, and I want to simulate a keypress there, I have to get the childwindow of the childwindow of the mainwindow for it to works.
So I found a way that seemed to work for every situation, basically, I used getWindow with the parameter GW_CHILD, to get the child-window with the highest z-value. Then I do it again for the child window and continue doing it until a certain childWindow has no more childWindows..
And it seemed to work and I was very happy!
However... I found cases where this does not work. Firefox is one of them. Firefox has the mainWindow, and then has a childWindow that's pretty much the same as the mainWindow and then it has another childWindow which is the website area, ie, the area under the address bar and menus. If I am on www.google.com for example, and I want to simulate a keypress in the focused search box, it works, cause getting the child-window of the child-window gives me the correct childWindow. However, if the user clicks on the address bar for example, nothing changes in the way the getWindow works. It will still eventually get the childwindow that's under the address bar, doing nothing, instead of simulating the keypress on the address bar.
The thing is that I haven't found a way of getting the active child window of a certain application. I can only use the GetWindow method to get the child window of a certain window and do it until I find a child window with no childs. However, as you've seen in the firefox case, the active window is actually the parent of the child window that I get in the end.
I've tried other api calls like getTopWindow but I had no luck..
Anyone can put some light on this issue?
Thanks!
If the application violates the windowing rules of windows, you'll need an exception.
In Mozilla, it's like this (IIRC):
There's this 'god' window of the class MozillaUIWindowClass and with the "- Mozilla Firefox" string in its window text.
If you know the position of the address bar you can use the following function:
And provide it with the HWND of the 'god' window and the position of the address bar.
HWND ChildWindowFromPoint(HWND, POINT);
There is probably a better solution, I came up with this since I needed to automate mouse, which is position based.
For more information you might need to consult the sources of particular software, or spend whole day in Spy+. :>
You can use GetGUIThreadInfo to get info about the UI of a particular process.
If you have the main window you can call GetWindowThreadProcessId to obtain the process thread id. Then you can call GetGUIThreadInfo to get info about the active/focused windows, etc.
I also have to point that some applications only have one window and all its controls are windowsless (like Windows Live Messenger).
Is there a way to determine if a menu is dropped down in the win32 api? Something that could be used like so:
HMENU hMenu = GetMenu(hWnd);
HMENU hSubMenu = GetSubMenu(hMenu);
// Is hSubMenu dropped down?
I'm not sure of a way to operate specifically on HMENUs to see if the menu is showing (and a quick scan of the platform SDK docs didn't turn up anything specific), but you might be able to use the GetMenuItemInfo function to get a MENUITEMINFO struct relating to the menu item which owns the dropdown. If the fState member has MFS_HILITE set, that should indicate that the item is selected and the sub menu is most likely open. Correctness isn't guaranteed on my part but it's worth experimenting with.
Another possible option would be using FindWindow with the class "#32768" to find the hWnd of whatever menus may be open, and sending the MN_GETHMENU message to whichever windows you find to retrieve the HMENU and compare it to the expected value from GetSubMenu.