[VB.NET] How to add a custom button to windows explorer?

[murderdoll]

Hello,

How can I write an addon to Windows explorer ( in windows 7 / vista ) that will act like a button and perform some function?

I want the button to be placed near the "Back" "Forward" buttons. In short words, I want to program a replica of this application here http://www.mavisapps.com/up-button/

Any ideas? Is there a modern way to do such a thing?

[Soldiers33]

thats quite a good idea, will have to search for something like this

[murderdoll]

Please if you find something report back, I would like to code it by my hands :)

[hdood]

You can't. Explorer no longer has toolbars, and the command bar is tied to the active namespace.

In other words, if you make your own namespace handler (the code responsible for creating everything you see in the listviews), you can have any buttons you want in it, but you can't modify the regular file browser namespace. Well, I don't think you can anyway.

[murderdoll]

I wonder how the program I linked in my first post got coded then :p

[hdood]

You can stick your tongue out all you want, but the fact remains that there is no API to do this at all. It was removed because of malware issues.

While I haven't looked at the program in question, there is a 99.9999998% chance that it works by injecting code to add the "up" button into the part of Explorer that is responsible for handling that area of the window (in other words it injects a function into the address space of Explorer and then tells the Explorer process to run it). This is probably one of the most advanced Windows programming subjects out there, and something that requires native code (in other words, no .NET runtime).

[Linkinfamous]

Shell extensions in .NET are, in general, frowned upon.

Edited September 5, 2009 by MioTheGreat