Replace OpenDialog...

[junale]

Hi,

(have googled, but nothing found)

Is their a way to replace the common open dialog. where is it stored? which dll?

Thanks in advance,

JunAle

[MCT]

open dialog?

do u mean openwith?

post a screenshot

[thehalon]

yes there is a way to modify this dialoge..... where was that page??

sec.

look here:

http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/ui_dlgs.html#opensave

[ceerp]

Having looked though the suggested web page it is only comctl32.dll that is modified. I have already done this previously. The dialog seems to be duplicated though because in some applications you see the nice buttons but in others, notepad for example, the buttons are traditional windows yellow.

Does anyone know where these mysterious bitmaps live?

Also, the bitmaps in comctl32.dll don't cover the 'back' button so this stays green when the rest are modified. Any ideas where that lives?

[Dobby]

I don't know any buttons that were 'traditional windows yellow' but I think what you could be talking about is whether they have the rounded theme applied to them.

Having said that Notepad is indeed up to date in that respect (at least on my Windows XP SP2).

If you are indeed talking about themes then the first thing to try is putting a .manifest file into the same place as the .exe. If an application is called notepad.exe then you need to create a (text) file called notepad.exe.manifest and paste the following into it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> 
<assemblyIdentity 
    version="1.0.0.0" 
    processorArchitecture="X86" 
    name="NOTEPAD.EXE"
    type="win32" 
/> 
<description>Notepad</description> 
<dependency> 
    <dependentAssembly> 
        <assemblyIdentity 
            type="win32" 
            name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" 
            version="6.0.0.0" 
            processorArchitecture="X86" 
            publicKeyToken="6595b64664ccf1df" 
            language="*" 
        /> 
    </dependentAssembly> 
</dependency> 
</assembly>

The name and description should be changed to the name of the app. The publicKeyToken is not really important but you can generate one with a GUID generator. Basically this will generate a random number.

Save this file and when you run notepad.exe it should have themed buttons among other controls. Of course this all depends on whether the application uses the standard windows controls. If not then you are screwed.

Hope that's what your question was about

[ceerp]

It's been a while since the original post - hope you're still interested! What I said above about Notepad and the traditional windows yellow icons was finally solved! In comctl32.dll that lives in system32, the bitmaps give the buttons at the top right. Once you replace the bitmaps with nice ones, some applications, like Notepad, still have the old buttons in the dialog. This is because they call different comctl32.dlls!

Run a search in your windows folder for comctl32.dll and there will be three of them (maybe more, I don't know) and these have to be modified too.

So that clears up the problem that I highlighted. Now, you wanted to modify the dialog itself, yes?

Well the dialog lives in comdlg32.dll. I have changed it in ResHacker so that the task plane is the same height as the files box - and only displays four icons. You may be interested in some registry tweaks that go along with the modifications.

The back button can be removed (good thing too because I haven't found it's bitmap anywhere) and the shortcuts on the task plane can be modified too. I got rid of the backbutton and Recent Documents with the following:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32]

"NoBackButton"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\PlacesBar]

"Place0"=dword:00000000

"Place1"=dword:00000005

"Place2"=dword:00000011

"Place3"=dword:00000012

@=dword:00000011

Hope that helps!