VB Shell Programming

The Shell Extension Project

All of the handlers that we will implement will be contained in a single ActiveX DLL project called RadEx. A stub project with the appropriate settings is included with the book’s downloadable code for this chapter. The project is an ActiveX DLL project set for Apartment threading (see Appendix A ), which is a requirement for shell extensions. The component will not load if this is not set. That’s all there is to it; there is nothing more to the project.

Registering Components the Easy Way

The easiest way to register components is to associate DLL files with regsvr32.exe. This simplifies component registration to a double click.

If the .dll file type is currently not associated with any program, you can make this association yourself by simply double-clicking on any .dll file in the shell. This action displays the Open With dialog box, which will allow you to select a program for association. Just navigate to regsvr32.exe, which is located in your system directory.

If you want to be really hard-core about it, you can add the keys for the association yourself into the registry. This information is placed under the application identifier for .dll files, which happens to be called dllfile, as illustrated in Figure 3.8.

Of course, the path to regsvr.exe might be different on your machine. Notice the %1 on the command line. This will be replaced by the name of the DLL that is being registered.

The source code that is provided with this chapter in the book’s ...