A question on Active Desktop

[Mike Chamberlain]

Hi there.

In WinXP, I need to progrmatically change the web page the user sees as
their active desktop. I can change the url in the registry key to the -
this is no problem - but obviously the desktop does not automatically
change to reflect the new setting.

Does anyone know how to programatically cause the Active Desktop to
re-read its settings from the registry and update the displayed page?

Can this even be done?

Any help much appreciated.

Mike

 

[paulmd]

Hi there.

In WinXP, I need to progrmatically change the web page the user sees as
their active desktop. I can change the url in the registry key to the -
this is no problem - but obviously the desktop does not automatically
change to reflect the new setting.

Does anyone know how to programatically cause the Active Desktop to
re-read its settings from the registry and update the displayed page?

Can this even be done?

Any help much appreciated.

Mike

Can you change the contents of the page without changing the URL?

 

[Mike]

By doing a meta refresh, yes, but for our purposes it would have to
refresh at least every minute. This would be bad because:

- it would annoy the user as they might be in the middle of using it at
the time
- it would put too much load on our web server, database server and
network as this page is going to be viewed by hundreds of users
simultaneously

Another possibility would be to put the meta refresh in a hidden
iframe, which, if it detected a change of page is required, could then
cause the change, but again, this is ugly, complex expensive.

Surely there must be some kind of API call to achieve this - after all
windows itself manages to "restart" the active desktop when you change
the settings manually through control panel.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!

Cheers,

Mike

 

[Mike]

By doing a meta refresh, yes, but for our purposes it would have to
refresh at least every minute. This would be bad because:

- it would annoy the user as they might be in the middle of using it at
the time
- it would put too much load on our web server, database server and
network as this page is going to be viewed by hundreds of users
simultaneously

Another possibility would be to put the meta refresh in a hidden
iframe, which, if it detected a change of page is required, could then
cause the change, but again, this is ugly, complex and expensive.

Surely there must be some kind of API call to achieve this - after all
windows itself manages to "restart" the active desktop when you change
the settings manually through control panel.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!

Cheers,

Mike

 

[David Candy]

Look up IActiveDesktop Interface

 

[David Candy]

I did write some scripts to test but they can't find desktop items. I can do it in 4 lines for an IE window.

--

 

[David Candy]

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set AllWindows = objShell.Windows
For Each window in AllWindows
msgbox window.locationname
Next

and
if window.locationname = "something" then window.refresh
there is also window.url as well.
--

 

[David Candy]

Remember to windows the web is part of the local namespace. So a web page is the same as a folder open on My Computer.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goodbye Web Diary
http://margokingston.typepad.com/harry_version_2/2005/12/thank_you_and_g.html#comments
=================================================
"David Candy" <.> wrote in message Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set AllWindows = objShell.Windows
For Each window in AllWindows
msgbox window.locationname
Next

and
if window.locationname = "something" then window.refresh
there is also window.url as well.
--