We've got several web-based applications that are launched from our ERP system (SAP R/3 in this case, but since we're using ShellExec, I don't consider this a SAP issue). The problem is that we can either set the IE to "open every URL passed from the ERP system in a new window" or to "reuse any one of the existing IE windows" (same problem with tabs). Both settings are not acceptable for our users: one of the web applications is a rather bulky medical image viewer applet that wreaks havoc if invoked multiple times. The other option is a no-go either because this way opening the image browser for a patient automatically displaces the lab result display for the very same patient and vice versa.
I'd like to have some control over which window may or may not be reused. My idea would be a kind of "window tag" and a helper program that checks if a window with that tag exists - if it does, reuse it, if not create it. So basically
IELauncher SEARCH http://www.google.com
would open a new window and tag it as SEARCH.
IELauncher DEVEL http://stackoverflow.com
would open a second window, tagging it as DEVEL. Then
IELauncher SEARCH http://www.wikipedia.org
would replace the contents of the first (google) window only.
Is this possible at all? Do you have any pointers for me where to start? I don't even know what to look for...
I had to resort to some rather ugly methods - dynamically assembling a HTML page that uses JavaScript and window.open() to open and access a window by name, then close the page executing the JavaScript. Ugly, but at least this way you get the additional benefit of being able to control certain aspects of the browser window like switching of the menu bar, toolbar and location bar.
Related
I have added a .Net windows form inside a saleslogix windows plugin, every thing is working fine but on pressing the "Tab" key inside this control, instead of going on the next textbox the control goes to next plugin.
I have searched it a lot and can not find a work around for this, when I added a browser control in another saleslogix windows plugin, the page inside this textbox has multiple text boxes in it. To my surprise on pressing the tab key it worked perfectly and control goes to the next text box.
Any help is much appreciated.
That's an entirely normal mishap when you use Winforms (and many other UI class libraries) in a host application. Navigation keys, like Tab and the cursor keys as well as shortcut keystroke keys, need to be recognized regardless which control has the focus. One way to do so would be to implement the KeyDown event handler on every single control. That's excessively painful of course.
So it doesn't work that way, the keystroke is recognized when it is received by the message loop, before it is dispatched to the control with the focus. Overriding the ProcessCmdKey() method is the general way to do this. The base method takes care of navigation and recognizing menu and button mnemonics.
Problem is, it isn't the .NET message loop that is receiving and dispatching messages. It is the host application that has the loop. And it doesn't know beans about ProcessCmdKey(). So it doesn't get called and navigation doesn't work.
It tends to work in a WebBrowser because it is an ActiveX control. Which is designed to interact with its host. In particular it negotiates to decide which one gets to process the key. The IOleInPlaceActiveObject::TranslateAccelerator() method does this. Not the kind of plumbing available in .NET and host apps are rarely written to provide an alternative.
You could consider the "excessively painful" solution but pretty unlikely you like the sound of it. There's only one other decent way to fix this, you must call ShowDialog() to display your form. Now it is the .NET loop that dispatches and the Tab and cursor keys work fine. That tends to be unwelcome advice, dialogs can be pretty awkward. If you are lucky and know what you're doing and the host can deal with it (usually not) then using a thread can take the sting out of the modality. Asking the vendor for advice, particularly the threading aspect, would be wise.
I'm doing an automation script for installation wizards using AutoIt. I'm trying to handle window changes in some way.
Can some one explain how these GUI's work?
When I click on the Next button it looks just like the components in the GUI is beeing changed. Is this tha case? Or is a new window created and the old destroyed?
I've noticed that the process ID is the same for all windows.
I'm sure there is some way to know which "state" the GUI is in, or which step?
By the way. All the windows has the same title.
Thanks
/Anders
This will be dependant on the program you are automating.
The easiest approach would be to look at what changes in the GUI between stages, likely candidates are if there is a label that is giving instructions for that step, or a button that has text changing (e.g. if the button says "Finish" then you know your at the end).
Most installer programs have child windows for grouping the controls of each stage. These are typically implemented as dialog resources (as can be seen when using something like reshacker on them). So although the window remains the same, the panels are being created/destroyed as appropriate. This is a very neat method of doing it, for the obvious reason that you don't need to have to code to create/destroy a lot of controls. Resource created dialogs don't have nice class names like windows sometimes do though, so this may not be a reliable way to check the state.
I know it's possible to take a dialog that you built yourself and parent it on another form. But is it possible to parent a standard Windows system dialog on a form that you designed?
Specifically, I'm trying to set up a form with multiple tabs that provide different ways to obtain a reference to data used by the program. One of those tabs should represent the file system, and the ideal way to do this would be with the standard Open dialog that can be instantiated with the COM identifier CLSID_FileOpenDialog.
Is there any way to take a system dialog and cause it to appear parented on another window, without the border, title bar, etc?
There are ways to use a hook, either via SetWindowsHookEx() or SetWinEventHook(), to grab a system dialog's HWND, then you can do whatever you want with it, such as call SetParent(). But just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD. System dialogs are designed to run as their own windows, not embedded in someone else's window. A better solution might be to use the same Shell display components that are used by Windows Explorer (and system dialogs) via IShellFolder::CreateViewObject() or SHCreateShellFolderView(), or find a third-party solution that does the hard work of interacting with the Shell for you.
I don't know what their official name is, but I mean these things:
Is there an official API for creating those in my own program?
And related question: Did you ever see these "split menu items" used anywhere other than the start menu? Where? This could point at an API.
Glancing at my own start menu, I'm guessing that most are generated the same way "Recent Documents" used to be done. i.e., observing the files that programs open.
As for new APIs, this page might be a good place to start sniffing around: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee461765%28VS.85%29.aspx
To create tasks like internet explorer etc, use ICustomDestinationList->AddUserTasks(), the recent items should show up for file types you are registered to handle (They are added by the open/save dialog or manually by calling SHAddToRecentDocs())
I wanted to have a GUI front-end for a script that accepts numerous command-line options, most of them are UNIX paths. So I thought rather than typing them in (even with auto-completion) every time, I'd create a GUI front end which contains text boxes with buttons beside them, which when clicked will invoke the file browser dialogue. Later, I thought I'd extend this to other scripts which would sure require a different set of GUI elements. This made me think if there's any existing app that would let me create a GUI dialog, after parsing some kind of description of the items that I want that window should contain.
I know of programs like Zenity, but I think it's doesn't give me what I want. For example, if I were to use it for the first script, it'll end up flashing sequence of windows in succession rather than getting everything done from a single window.
So, basically I'm looking at some corss-platform program that lets me create a window from a text description, probably XML or the like. Please suggest.
Thanks
Jeenu
Mozilla's XUL is a cross platform application framework - . You could write an app as a Firefox plugin or a standalone XUL application.
mono and monodevelop could work for this. Or even something super simple like shoes.