Global context menu with externally customizable menu items?

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Greetings,

From my day job in the printing industry, I have a request...
Here is the scenario:

You are in front of Windows Explorer.
You right click on a Pdf file.
The Windows context menu appear.
You move the mouse to the custom built context menu.
This context menu then shows menu items.
You select the first one.
A script residing somewhere is called to lpr the file over to a printer.

The customer wants to be able to configure the menu items of the context menu using an external tool (GUI). Essentially that tool would create menu items and match them to scripts generated based on user inputs.

Can something like this even be possible?
I would need to have a few pointers, maybe a 10 000 foot overview of the technologies involved and best approach. This would save me a ton of time of course.

Thank you!!!

Posted 5-Aug-14 4:48am

Shaareable

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KarstenK · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-06T02:47:00

It is an advanced task, but the famous Michael Dunn wrote an excellent article about Writing Shell Extensions.

And also on MSDN I found Windows Shell context menu handler.

One tip in front: for some actions only run if the process is admin or UAC is disabled - installing and sometimes debugging.

Be prepared of cryptic error messages - "Welcome in DLL-Hell" :-O