I have a need to regularly search our internal directory for colleagues across the organisation (30k people). It's slow and irritating to launch even a shortcut to the intranet directory.
What I'd like to do is create a custom 'widget' (might be the wrong word) on my Windows 8.1 taskbar which is just a text box and a search button. This would then launch a browser with a HTTP POST url which will have my query in the URL.
I'm having trouble finding any documentation on how to create a custom taskbar app/widget.
Any ideas where I can find the documentation on this?
A deskband will do.But Microsoft's recommendation is don't create new deskbands , write thumbnail toolbars instead. If you go with write thumbnail toolbars, you can create an enter text button and a search button, register with ITaskbarList3::ThumbBarAddButtons, and create a textbox when the enter text button is clicked for the text editing.
You can also integrate with Windows search by writing a web service that integrates with Windows Federated Search. But this uses Windows Explorer's search box and your data there could be pollution to the user when they search for something else.
Related
Is there any way to pop open a browser window from a Teams app tab (desktop client)?
I came across the following link and from my interpretation of the reply it seems it's not possible.
Quoted from link for reference:
Unfortunately it’s not possible to use window.open in Teams tabs. Because we block opening of new windows to arbitrary sites within our Teams Desktop Client (for security reasons) you need to always use microsoftTeams.authentication.authenticate (if you want a popup window) or microsoftTeams.tasks.startTask (if you want an iframe-based dialog) to open a secondary app view.
It's not very clear to me what the microsoftTeams.authentication.authenticate reference above is suggesting.
Alternatively, if not a browser window, can we attempt to open another app installed on the device (e.g. Excel)?
Thanks in advance!
Are you just wanting to launch a new browser entirely? If so, a regular anchor tag, with a target attribute (e.g. ...), will work fine (I'm doing this in a tab myself, and it's working without problem).
You could try using a TaskModule to open a custom HTML/ Javascript or an iframe based widget inside a popup from within your Teams tab.
microsoftTeams.authentication.authenticate() will let you Authenticate the user against you tab. You can find the docs for this here.
Is it possible to create custom windows features? for instance add new buttons to the start menu or maybe a button on the task bar like the Cortana button. Even add a new button to windows explorer. If it is can someone please point me in the right direction as google doesn't seem to return any helpful results
You can create custom widgets on the taskbar by creating a deskband shell extension.
Creating a button in the start menu or in other places that have no extension support requires major work and will often create a buggy/unstable result because you might have to inject yourself into the Explorer desktop process (and other processes on Windows 10).
I have an idea for a text formatting tool that would be a useful within a number applications.
Is it possible to create an application that would popup when triggered by a hot key or icon click (trigger method not too important) and then give the user options to reformat the text in the active text box of whatever application is active.
I suspect there might be some standard winapi way to do this that would work on many applications but would not work on apps that are using proprietary text box widgets. Is this the case ?
I am testing a chat client at a web service. I thought the best way to do this was to open the website in one internet explorer window, log in, open the chat. Then open a new IE window(in private mode so that the log in details will be forgotten) go the the page and then log in with another user and open the chat, and then start chatting with the other user in the other browser window.
The problem is when I have done everything in the first window and I open a new window, all actions are triggered in the first window even though the second window is selected. Is there any way to select which browser window to use? Or are there better ways to test this functionality without opening two internet explorer windows?
Solved: I solved this by opening a new window in private mode. When I wanted to do actions in that window I defined the browser window as:
BrowserWindow privateWindow = new BrowserWindow();
privateWindow.SearchProperties.Contains("[InPrivate]");
You need to find some characteristic of the two IE windows that is different and ensure that it is included in the search criteria used to find the two windows. However modern browsers are complex, the distinction between windows and tabs it not always clear; window titles can change depending on which tab is selected.
Specific windows are selected by setting the properties of the UITestControl objects (and of derived objects). In the UI Map editor the properties panel has fields for the "Windows Title" and the "Search Criteria". For some controls there is also a "Filter Properties" field. The same fields are available if hand coding rather than recording tests.
I've got a Windows Mobile 5 and i need to hide settings icon
We have employees that don't speak English, and I need the desktop to be very simplified. I just need hide the icon settings beacause got configuration that they cant to move
Here is an application including source code to hide elements from the home screen.
You have to look at the registry at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items and set Enabled=0 for the items that should not be shown.
The settings icon is controlled separately by HKLM\Security\Shell\StartInfo:HideSettings registry key.
Although you can hide the settings icon, the user can still access settings using the top bar! To prohibit that you need to code more. See my KIOSK articles at my web blog above.