I want to make a program that allows you to load higlighted textr from any app by right-clicking it and selecting the option in the context menu. I know it is posible in the windows 7 explorer, but I want to do it in any program, like in IE or Goolge Chrome or even Word.
Can it be done? If so, how?
Related
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).
Before Windows 7 came, right clicking on any application on taskbar use to popup a menu like shown in picture below.
All the menu items that you see below 'maximize' and above 'close' are the custom menu that I had added. I had developed a system tool called PMW(process Manager for windows) that would add these menu's to all the running applications.
With Windows 7 and above these kind of context menu is gone. Old menu comes only when we do shift key+ right click. Now After 4-5 years I have been thinking to upgrade this tool.
I was wondering if Windows jump list provides an option to add a generic task to all application? If it does allows then perhaps I update this tool for Windows.
My understanding is with JumpList I can add two types of menu one is URLs/Files and second is Task. and both of these perhaps would be part of only application that you developing. I think perhaps I cant inject a few my task into the jump list of all other applications. Can I?
I have a confusion that MSWord is a MDI or SDI application. Looking at the Application, I do believe that it is a SDI application but there are people who strongly "believe" that its an example of MDI. After using the Taskmanager in windows, the Applications tab list all all the instances of the Documents currently opened. However there is only one process in the Processes tab.
Since all the documents have same process, it make me feel its an MDI. But at the same time, the Applications tab lists all the documents opened make methink its an SDI. What do you people think about this? Please give your valuable and detailed answers.
If you uncheck Show all documents in the taskbar in Options, Word is a classical MDI application (even Word 2010).
If you leave it checked, it's an SDI application with multiple root windows.
According to Microsoft, it is an MDI application: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa263481(v=vs.60).aspx
Depending on your settings and version, it could be MDI or SDI. It is MDI in older versions and if you use the "Show all documents in taskbar" option; otherwise, it is SDI.
Honestly, I didn't realize this part myself, until I tested:
After using the Taskmanager in windows, the Applications tab list all all the instances of the Documents currently opened. However there is only one process in the Processes tab.
Thank you and +1 on the post. On exploring further, I found something that might shed light further. I am using 2007, but I guess it would apply for 2010 as well. I clicked on the Control Menu (the small menu that pops up when you click on the Icon on the top left corner - used to be called Control Menu, before Microsoft decided to redraw its interface). You would find a "Word Options" button. Click on it, in the dialog that pops up after that, go to "Advanced" tab. Scroll down to the "Display" section. Locate the "Show all windows in the Taskbar" check box, I guess it will be checked. Uncheck it. You would see that there are no multiple windows (corresponding to each document) anymore. Also, in Task Manager, you will see only one instance even in the Applications Tab.
With this, I strongly believe Word is still an MDI. Oh by the way, if you want to see every document opened after you change these "Advanced" options, you might want to go to View menu and and chose "View side by side" option.
I came across some more info regarding this from Chris Ryan which I am sharing here:
It depends on what you mean by MDI.
MS-Word does have multiple documents and an interface but it does not fit the classic definition of an MDI application because it does not use an MDICLIENT window class to manage the child frames.
For an example of an MDICLIENT, see:
ftp://ftp.charlespetzold.com/ProgWin5/Chap19/MDIDemo/MDIDemo.c .
ftp://ftp.charlespetzold.com/ProgWin5/Chap19/MDIDemo/Release/MDIDemo.exe
Even the older versions of Word and Excel that had the child windows inside the main frame, were technically not MDI. They looked like it but they did not use MDICLIENT. MS used a proprietary windowing library called Software Dialog Manager. SDM was used so a common application code base could be used on multiple platforms: Windows, OS/2, & Mac. All they had to do was recompile for that platform and link a platform specific SDM library.
This link talks a little about SDM but does not mention MDICLIENT
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd317997(v=vs.85).aspx
Is there a way to create a custom Windows 7 logon screen and UI? I don't mean just customizing the picture, I mean something in the sense of a flash splash screen on a website. And then having the whole UI customized in the sense that, instead of a start button, I have can have like... a plus sign that opens up a customized start menu.
Is there anything in the Windows GUI library that will enable this? I know quite a few languages except for assembly, not sure if it would require that anyway.
In other words, if you go to www.sony.com you see how it loads up? Is that possible in a Windows environment? If not, where or how could I do it in another environment? Thanks!
Under Windows 7, IE 8 shows every open tab as a taskbar thumbnail. How can I achieve this in my own app?
MSN Messenger exhibits the same behavior.
I believe that this is done with the Windows API Code Pack: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack
And here's a blog post explaining how "custom window previews can be used to expose a list of child windows (browser tabs) as thumbnail- and peek-enabled windows in the taskbar." Sounds like what you need: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/sasha/archive/2009/02/12/windows-7-taskbar-apis.aspx
The following article should help. There are several new taskbar features in Windows 7, all of them are discussed at the link below.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd942846.aspx
Note that the Aero Peek feature has nothing to do with task bar buttons, it just lets you make all windows fully transparent to preview your desktop and gadgets. What you were actually looking for is "Windows 7 Grouped Taskbar Thumbnails", in case you need to do additional searches.
This is the best reference I've got. Note that I'm assuming native code here, a .NET equivalent could be p/invoke'd up in a fairly straight forward manner.
It boils down to the following:
For each tab, create a proxy window
For these windows call DwmSetWindowAttribute to set DWMWA_FORCE_ICONIC_REPRESENTATION & DWMWA_HAS_ICONIC_THUMBNAIL
Whenever these proxy windows receives a WM_DWMSENDICONICLIVEPREVIEWBITMAP message, render the corresponding thumbnail into the proxy window
Whenever a proxy window receives a WM_ACTIVATE, switch to the correct tab
You also need to handle WM_SYSCOMMAND
Grab your ITaskbarList4
Use it to register each of your proxy windows as a tab
Manage tab order and what not via the ITaskbarList4 interface (this includes activating tabs)
It seems like there should be a better way to do this, but its all I'm aware of at the moment.