I am trying to replace all Windows Common (Open/Save) filedialog calls with my own custom dialog. From what I read so far, I could do this with a hook on the calls either by writing my own or by using libraries like detours or easyhook. But someone told me recently that such an approach is only possible pre-Vista, because of the change in sessions architecture and it is impossible to do such a switch in Win 7/8. Now, I am not a guy who likes the word 'impossible' :) So if you have any advice on the matter, any at all, please do tell and I will appreciate your kindness.
For what I what to do, my application will be run by the user, it will reside in the tray, and when the user calls for Open/Save dialog from any application, it should replace the default common dialog with a custom dialog.
The newer style Common Item dialogs are implemented as standard COM objects, so you could just implement your own DLL that exposes the same COM interfaces (IFileOpenDialog, IFileSaveDialog, etc) and then override the default registrations in the Registry with your own. That way, every app that uses the dialogs will load your DLL instead of Microsoft's.
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I have a problem. I am using C++ to develop an application in Win32 that among other scopes automatize some user input process in an external app in order for the user to be ready to operate.
Particularly I would like to use Win32 API to fill some text in a Qt QWidget control. I wrote a DLL in pure C to get this task done. I tested it on a MFC application and it works very well.
Anyway I could not get it to work for Qt QWidget controls.
I was able to get the right handle via the EnumChildWindows function (stored in the struct Field).
SendMessage(Field.hFound,WM_SETTEXT,(WPARAM)NULL,(LPARAM)_T("bla bla bla"));
But the SendMessage doesn't seem to work because maybe the control (most probably a QLineedit) supports other messages to get this job done.
Is there any specification for these events, I googled a lot but I could not find anything suitable.
What is the most straightforward way to get this code working? Is there an Event table mapping for Qt I could use? Do I have to use some Qt headers and link it against a DLL (this could be a problem because of licensing)?
Thanks in advance.
Qt, at least 4.8 and 5.x, uses foreign controls. None of the widgets, beyond the window, have native handles. Your EnumChildWindows is most likely not finding what you think it's finding.
If you don't have access to the Qt application's source code, there's nothing else you can do, short of injecting your own code into the running application. If the application is dynamically linked, you can figure out what version of Qt it's using, and what compiler it was compiled with, and the likely set of Qt configuration options. You can then compile your own code with the same compiler and using same Qt version, and inject it into the running application. You can then enumerate visible windows, and their children, and find the control you're after.
I have an MFC app that uses AfxMessageBox to display message boxes. The app itself lets an end-user to change the user interface language. On the inside it does so by loading resources using LCIDs (or FindResourceEx API.) My issue is that I can't seem to make AfxMessageBox to take LCID to change the language for OK, Cancel buttons, etc. This also affects File and Folder Open dialog windows.
Any ideas how to do this?
PS. This approach must work under Windows XP and up.
According to this SO article, there are no standard functions for this, there's a link to a CodeProject article "Localizing System MessageBox" with source code for a DLL (it's in c# but seems simple enough to be rewritten in C++) which uses Windows Hook so that you can supply your own text for the MessageBox buttons; there's even a suggestion for sizing buttons to the text in the discussion part of the same article.
I am writing a C++ application and I have a Login Box that's shown in a regular Dialog Box Frame. I see that some people can SKIN the entire dialog box and makes it look really nice. I was wondering if anyone can give me some pointers as to how to do that.
I'd need more details to give you a good answer.
The answer very much depends on which OS you're using and how you're programming your GUI (for example on Windows - plain Win32, MFC, ATL, Qt, Windows Forms, WPF etc etc).
If you're just using the Windows API here's a link to get you started.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/skinstyle.aspx
Beware: custom skinning dialog boxes can be a very large task if you want to customise the look of every control as you end up writing very complicated custom controls.
Alternatively do you just want to make sure that your dialogs appear with Windows XP visual style rather than pre-XP style? This will require changes to your application to use the new common controls and visual style. Note that this changes the behaviour of some Windows APIs and can potentially have side effects (see ISOLATION_AWARE_ENABLED).
I am new to MFC well not entirely new but wanted to ask experts on this forum as why one would choose one project over the other. I hope this is not a stupid question as I am relatively new to MFC.
Thanks so much
Chose based on what template your application fits best into:
Single Document Interface (SDI) - if your application needs to work with only 1 document or data object or data set at a time
Example: notepad.exe
Multiple Document Interface (MDI) - if your applicaiton needs to work with multiple documents or data objects or data set at a time
Example: Visual Studio
Dialog Based - for anything else.
Example: Calculator
No matter what you chose, you still have the same functionality available to you in the end and you can cusotmize it in any way. So you aren't limiting yourself to anything you start with.
All variants come with CWinApp which is the base class for which you derive your MFC applications.
With a dialog based application you start with a CDialog as well. With an SDI application you start with CMainFrame, CDocument, and CView as well.
If you select an SDI project you get a whole Model-View-Controller framework included.
You get a document class (inheriting from CDocument) which ideally should hold all of the data, and a view class (inheriting from CView) to do with the display.
You get given a hosting frame with a menu already attached, and there are functions you can override to save and load to file.
If you have a dialog based application, then you get one dialog. That's it. Of course, this dialog can spawn off others, but the application essentially consists of a dialog.
If you're developing a small application that just does one task, a dialog application is appropriate, because you don't need the overhead.
If you are developing an application where the user will be loading, editing and saving data, then the SDI path would be more appropriate.
Having answered your question, I'd politely ask if there was a compelling reason why you were choosing MFC over Windows Forms. I believe that MFC was an excellent technology for its day, but the Visual Studio suite offers more advanced tools (if you're prepared to go down the .NET path).
If a "document" is the right metaphor for your application, use SDI or MDI. (Single of only one document can be open at a time, Multiple if more than one.) When you think about it, the document metaphor really isn't appropriate for most applications.
I have an ActiveX component which contains a control (webbrowser control embedded in composite control dialog pane) for accessing certain URL. The ActiveX component accessing URL can be used in other MFC or VB projects. The usage is to register the ActiveX component (use regsvr32 cmd) and then insert the control in a dialog window by using "Insert ActiveX control".
Now I am planning to convert the ActiveX component to static library with the same browser window and web access functions. I wonder how to do it? In addition, how the browser window (in static library) can be used in other MFC projects. Is it through functions call? Is there a sample project available?
I used Microsoft .Net 2003 as development tool.
Thank you very much in advance.
I'm a little unclear about the extent to which you think you can put all of that in a static library.
This is probably not going to be as straightfoward as you think. The wizard and code in VS/MFC/ATL which allows you to insert an ActiveX control in a dialog is doing a lot of work for you. That said, it makes certain assumptions about the nature of the site for the ActiveX control, such as how the message pump works, who is the owner window, the threading model, and so on. In a dialog, these are knowns. In another context, they are not.
The right way to go about doing what you're doing is to leave it as an ActiveX control. Maybe if you stated what problem you are trying to solve by putting it into a static library, we could give other options.
The WebBrowser ActiveX control is really a wrapper for the shdocvw.dll library, in the system32 folder. shdocvw.dll is the heart and soul of IE (and, by extension, much of the Windows Explorer interface). It's all very heavily based on COM, which has its own rules for loading libraries and so on. So the site (any application which wants to use your ActiveX control) really needs to be friendly to ActiveX/COM anyway.