AutoHotkey Community

[fragman]

Ever since I started using Win7, this command bar annoyed me, since it only takes space and doesn't provide much useful actions. However, I have now figured out a way how to add buttons that make explorer change location to favorite folders.
It is rather tedious, so I wrote a script to do this automagically!
It can add any (real) folder, and remove one or all buttons without much work, you just need to specify the paths.

For details, read http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18832-adding-custom-buttons-to-the-explorer-command-bar/ for how to add buttons.

I simply have such a button execute the following script with a path as argument:

[Night Hawk]

There's a slight problem with the FolderButtonManager.exe file to work out at least for the 64bit Windows 7.

[Lexikos]

See the bottom of fragman's post, where it mentions the AutoHotkey_L requirement.

[fragman]

Ooops, looks like I compiled the exe incorrectly.
Can I replace the normal autohotkey.exe with the ahk_l one and compile it then?
You can still run the script with the autohotkey_l.exe though, that's what I'm doing locally.

Edit: I've updated the file with a fixed version that runs.
Edit2: Nicer version of ChangeLocation.exe that doesn't pop up autocomplete menu.

[Night Hawk]

The one thing to know about the ChangeLocation.exe is that you need two screens for that one. The two buttons there are for moving from one to another with the other for seeing a window stretched across both monitors.

I still didn't see any result with the FolderButtonManager.exe however. This is on the 64bit Windows 7 to note.

[fragman]

You might have to give yourself rights for the registry keys first. I don't know yet how to do that in AHK.

(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes)

[fragman]

Updated code and files with a much more reliable method to set explorer address. I'm probably going to add command line switches to the manager script later on so that you can add and remove folders with hotkeys from other scripts.

Also to clarify things a bit, this has nothing to do with multimonitor support, Night Hawk confused this with a multimonitor tool that was running it seems.

[RobOtter]

fragman, nice work!

Do you know how create a drop down list instead of a single text entry? It would save much space in the command bar if one would add quite a bunch of folders.

Regards,
Rob

[RobOtter]

Hi fragman,

today I saw your post at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues/thread/2ffef86f-8364-41fb-b7b7-4d0114ed0f01 - unfortunately, you didn´t receive an answer yet.

Playing with the registry, I´ve also found no way of mixing both methods of adding buttons. It came to my mind that it should be sufficient to add a new command in the CommandStore hive (if buttons in the FolderType branch are adde using the command name list) and add the newly created command to this list.
Commands in the CommandStore are also capable of creating drop down lists (have a look at Windows.organize/SubCommands) which would be great for a huge list of Favorite folders (my post above).

There are two problems right now:
- It seems impossible to add a button label (Key: MUIVerb) by using a simple string - only a reference to a dll resource is possible. Therefore, one can´t specify an arbitrary label at runtime - a static dll has to be created by the programmer before.
- No way to specify a program to execute directly, only way is to use command/DelegateExecute with cryptict GUID (see Windows.closewindow/command/DelegateExecute for example).

Any ideas anyone?

EDIT: Ok, this gets OT now. I´ll see what I can find out using the usenet.

[fragman]

Let me know if you find anything, I'm highly interested in this too.

I think submenus can only be done via the command store hive, but I'm not sure.

Also, I would like to get those things working on "My Computer", as there seem to be premade entries which are probably stored in explorer itsself.
The organize menu and new folder seem non-removeable too?

One could maybe use the MUIVerbs by automating something like ressource hacker to change the strings inside a placeholder dll on runtime.

For executing programs, one could write a dll that provides a fixed number of GUIDs which then read a path from a config file to execute.

The script I'm currently working on (see http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=305224#305224 for a very outdated feature list) can store and recall paths on the numpad keys. I'm thinking to integrate this with the paths in the command bar, this would make it easy to customize them.

[fragman]

My script now has integration with the command bar. You can store current path with ctrl+NumpadX and recall by clicking on command bar entry or pressing NumpadX. It's quite handy for quickly accessing often used folders, too bad they don't show up on 'My Computer'. Also it would be good to remove all other entries from that bar.
The only other possibility I could see would be to overlay your own GUI on that bar and do stuff there. This would allow for more control, but it might not be as neatly integrated.

Edit: I also integrated use of subinacl.exe for setting required permissions in registry.

[too lazy to log on]

The download link doesn't work anymore.

can someone provide a mirror?


Thanks

[fragman]

I suggest using my program [url=http://code.google.com/p/7plus/ 7plus], it has a nice integration of that feature. You can also check out its source to see how it's done.