The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Shell Extensions - Index

Since the Idiot's Guide series has become quite large, here is an index of all the articles that gives a quick blurb about each one, so you can quickly find the articles that interest you.

Some other dedicated folks are writing translations of the Guide. Here are the published translations:

• Alexander Shargin's Russian translation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.
• Maurice Montgenie's Win32 assembler version.
• Gengis Dave's Italian translation. Once at the site, click on Programmazione, then Libri. HTML and PDF versions available.

Part I - A step-by-step tutorial on writing shell extensions

Part I is a simple overview of shell extensions, and discusses how to debug them. The sample extension illustrates adding items to the context menu for text files.

Part II - A tutorial on writing a shell extension that operates on multiple files at once

Part II demonstrates how to write a context menu extension that operates on all of the selected files at once. The sample project is a utility that adds registration and unregistration commands to the context menus for DLLs.

Part III - A tutorial on writing a shell extension that shows pop-up info for files

Part III demonstrates the QueryInfo extension that customizes the infotip for text files. It also explains how to use MFC in a shell extension.

Part IV - A tutorial on writing a shell extension that provides custom drag and drop functionality

Part IV shows how to add items to the menu displayed when the user drags and drops with the right mouse button in Explorer. The sample project is a utility that makes hard links for files. (Note: the extension is functional only on Windows 2000, but you can still compile and run the extension on previous versions of Windows. See the article for instructions.)

Part V - A tutorial on writing a shell extension that adds pages to the properties dialog of files

Part V demonstrates how to add new pages to Explorer's Properties dialog. The sample project adds a page on which you can edit the created, modified, and last accessed times of files.

Part VI - A tutorial on writing a shell extension that can be used on the Send To menu

Part VI discusses a drop handler extension that gets added to the SendTo menu. The sample project is a clone of the Send To Any Folder power toy.

Part VII - A tutorial on using owner-drawn menus in a context menu shell extensions, and on making a context menu extension that responds to a right-click in a directory background

Part VII tackles two topics suggested by readers: owner-drawn menu items and the context menu for the background of directory windows. The sample project contains two extensions: a bitmap viewer (pictured above) that puts a thumbnail of BMP files in the context menu, and a simple extension that adds items to the context menu of directory backgrounds.

Part VIII - A tutorial on adding columns to Explorer's details view via a column handler shell extension

Part VIII demonstrates how to add columns to the details view of Explorer on Windows 2000. The sample project adds a few columns that show ID3v1 tag data in MP3 files.. (This extension works only on Windows 2000.)

Part IX - A tutorial on writing an extension to customize the icons displayed for a file type.

Part IX shows how to customize file icons on a file-by-file basis. The demo project is an extension that shows 4 different icons for text files, depending on the size of the file.