Question about a toolbar add-on for IE6 and IE7

[Frank S]

I have a toolbar add-on that is used in IE6 and IE7 (in C++). One of the
toolbar buttons has an image that is changed to reflect the status of an
external application.

How can I detect when IE is the active application (to update the button
image)? I need a technique that works reliably in both IE6 and IE7.

(The approach I used in IE6, subclassing the browser window and trapping
WM_ACIVATEAPP, causes problems when used in IE7.)

Thanks,

Frank

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Frank,

I think that you will have to detect the IE version and from there hook into
the appropiate class for each version. IE6 uses the Internet Explorer_Server
class while IE7 uses the IEFrame class (use the SpyXX utility to find the
class names of the windows. In IE7 you can enum the TabWindow classes to
find the active tab. Also dont forget that there is the MSN Search toolbar
and the Yahoo Companion toolbars that offer tabbed browsing for IE6, so you
may have to detect if they are installed and make appropiate changes to the
class name that you hook into.

Regards.

 

[Frank S]

Hi Frank,

I think that you will have to detect the IE version and from there hook into
the appropiate class for each version. IE6 uses the Internet Explorer_Server
class while IE7 uses the IEFrame class (use the SpyXX utility to find the
class names of the windows. In IE7 you can enum the TabWindow classes to
find the active tab. Also dont forget that there is the MSN Search toolbar
and the Yahoo Companion toolbars that offer tabbed browsing for IE6, so you
may have to detect if they are installed and make appropiate changes to the
class name that you hook into.

Regards.

Thanks for the reply Rob, but that just sounds too complicated. I am
hoping for an easier approach. Microsoft?

Frank