Favorites MultiView

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• Download Demo - 11.4 Kb

What's New:

On request from Swinefeaster, I added an image and a demo version. A completely updated version allowing selection of Favorites is under testing.

Introduction

This article demonstrates the technique of dynamically creating multiple Views at run-time and opening web-pages on the Views created. The number of Views created depends on the list of web-pages saved at the root of the Favorites folder in your Internet Explorer.

Sometime in 1997, I had downloaded a shareware software (don't remember it's name). The software had 8 Views in which you could open sites. At that time, I was a Visual Basic developer and used to be fascinated by these software packages which were probably made using C++ (an alien language for me then). But now that I know a little about VC++, I thought why not try something of this sort and then if possible share the code with the Internet community because of which I have learnt a lot over the years. As regards to multiple Views, I searched all over the MSDN CD (in VS6) and in frustration finally posted my question to a site named ..... and after 15 days got a reply from them before which I had managed to get what I wanted by trial and error methods.

I developed this project after seeing a similar project on some other site (???) which had 6 Views (3 columns and 2 rows) and surprisingly there were 6 sub-classes of CHTMLView, one for each View.

Features

• Retrieve all Favorites sites
• Stop retrieval of individual sites
• Stop retrieval of all sites
• View individual sites in full-screen

How to Use: (the Application)

1. Build the Project
2. Exit Visual Studio
3. Log-on to the Internet
4. Go to your favorite sites
5. From the Internet Explorer menu option, select Favourites->Add (do not click on the Create in >> option). Save by clicking OK.
6. Repeat steps 4-5 till you saved all you favorite sites
7. Close Internet Explorer (do not log-off the Internet)

To use when Logged-On to the Internet

• Start FavMV application from the project's Debug folder
• From the menu, select Favorites->Retreive
• To view individual sites in full-screen, first click on the site you want to view in full-screen and then from the menu, select View->Full-Screen.
• To open a site not in your favorites, select File->Open from the menu

To Use when Logged-Off from the Internet

• Start Internet Explorer
• From the menu option, select File->Work Offline
• Minimize Internet Explorer (do not close Internet Explorer)
• Start FavMV application from the project's Debug folder
• From the menu, select Favourites->Retreive
• To view individual sites in full-screen, first click on the site you want to view in full-screen and then from the menu, select View->Full-Screen.

About the Code

I have embedded CWebBrowser2 ActiveX control inside the CHTMLView sub-class which is of type CView and not CHtmlView, because I wanted to display the name of each site on the bar inside each View. I could have used CHtmlView instead.

//
// To start, we get the location of Favourites folder
// on the system from the Registry in this way
//
BOOL CMainFrame::getFavouriteskey(TCHAR szPath[MAX_PATH])
{
    TCHAR           sz[MAX_PATH];
    HKEY            hKey;
    DWORD           dwSize;

    if(RegOpenKey(HKEY_CURRENT_USER, _T("Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\
        CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\User Shell Folders"), &hKey) != ERROR_SUCCESS)
    {
        TRACE0("Favorites folder not found\n");
        return FALSE;
    }
    dwSize = sizeof(sz);
    RegQueryValueEx(hKey, _T("Favorites"), NULL, NULL, (LPBYTE)sz, &dwSize);
    ExpandEnvironmentStrings(sz, szPath, MAX_PATH);
    RegCloseKey(hKey);
}
//
// Using the returned folder path above
// we find the count of the no. of sites 
// on the Favourites menu option in this way
//
// Note : The that the file-wide Character Array
// if filled in this member function for later
// use in the process of retreiving the sites
//
int CMainFrame::GetFavorites(LPCTSTR pszPath, int nStartPos , 
    CStringArray* caFavourites)
{

    #define INTERNET_MAX_PATH_LENGTH 256

    int nCount = 0;
    CString         strPath(pszPath);
    CString         strPath2;
    CString         str;
    WIN32_FIND_DATA wfd;
    HANDLE          h;
    int             nPos;
    int             nEndPos;
    TCHAR           buf[INTERNET_MAX_PATH_LENGTH];
    CStringArray    astrFavorites;
    CStringArray    astrDirs;

    // make sure there's a trailing backslash
    if(strPath[strPath.GetLength() - 1] != _T('\\'))
        strPath += _T('\\');
    strPath2 = strPath;
    strPath += "*.*";

    // now scan the directory, first for
    // .URL files and then for subdirectories
    // that may also contain .URL files

    h = FindFirstFile(strPath, &wfd);
    if(h != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
    {
        nEndPos = nStartPos;
        do
        {
            if((wfd.dwFileAttributes & (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY|
                        FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN|FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM))==0)
            {
                str = wfd.cFileName;
                if(str.Right(4) == _T(".url"))
                {

                    // an .URL file is formatted just like an
                    // .INI file, so we can
                    // use GetPrivateProfileString() to get
                    // the information we want
                    ::GetPrivateProfileString(_T("InternetShortcut"), 
                        _T("URL"), _T(""), buf, 
                        INTERNET_MAX_PATH_LENGTH,
                        strPath2 + str);

                    caFavourites->Add(buf);
                    str = str.Mid(0, str.GetLength()-4);    
                    str = str.Left(str.GetLength() - 4);

                    // scan through the array and perform an insertion sort
                    // to make sure the menu ends up in alphabetic order
                    for(nPos = nStartPos ; nPos < nEndPos ; ++nPos)
                    {
                        if(str.CompareNoCase(astrFavorites[nPos]) < 0)
                            break;
                    }
                    astrFavorites.InsertAt(nPos, str);
                    ++nEndPos;
                    nCount++;
                }
            }
        } while(FindNextFile(h, &wfd));
        FindClose(h);
    }

    return nCount;
}
//
// We now create Views depending on the no. of sites
// as returned above, in this way 
//
void CMainFrame::CreateViews(int nRows, int nCols, CCreateContext* pContext)
{
    int i ,j;
    int iIndex = 0;
    m_Splitter.CreateStatic(this, nRows,nCols);
    for( i = 0 ; i <= nRows-1;i++)
        for( j = 0; j <= nCols-1 ; j++)
            m_Splitter.CreateView(i,j, RUNTIME_CLASS(CMyHTMLView), 
                        CSize(0,0), pContext);

}

Having created the View, we wait for the user to click on the menu option "Retrieve".

//
// we now retreive each of the sites 
// into the View using the character array
// filled-in in the member function GetFavorites above
//
void CMainFrame::OnRetrieve() 
{
    int i,j;
    int nCols = m_Splitter.GetColumnCount();
    int nRows = m_Splitter.GetRowCount();
    int iIndex = 0;
    for( i = 0 ; i <= nRows-1;i++)
    {
        for( j = 0; j <= nCols-1 ; j++)
        {
            CString url = caFavourites.GetAt(iIndex);
            CString siteName = url.Mid(url.Find("//", 0)+2);
            siteName = siteName.Left(siteName.Find("/",0));
            m_wndStatusBar.SetPaneText(0, siteName, TRUE);
            CMyHTMLView* cv = (CMyHTMLView*)m_Splitter.GetPane(i,j);
            // the URL is passed here to the respective
            // sub-class view CMyHTMLView to open
            // the site
            cv->NavigateTheURL(url);
            cv->bURLRetreived = TRUE;
            iIndex++;
            if(bStopAll)
                break;
        }
        if(bStopAll)
            break;

    }

    CRect rect;
    GetClientRect(&rect);
    rect.right += 10;
    rect.bottom += 10;
    MoveWindow(rect, TRUE);
    m_wndStatusBar.SetPaneText(0, "", TRUE);
    bURLRetreived=TRUE;
}
//
// The method for displaying sites is quite simple
// as can be seen below in the sub-class
// CHTMLView (all the above is in the Mainframe
// CMainFrame)
//
void CMyHTMLView::NavigateTheURL(CString url)
{

    CString siteName = url.Mid(url.Find("//", 0)+2);
    siteName = siteName.Left(siteName.Find("/",0));

    m_SiteNameBar.SetWindowText(siteName);
    // below if the line for retreiving the site
    m_WebBrowser.Navigate(url, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
    bURLRetreived = TRUE;
}

You can also view individual sites in full-screen, by first setting focus to the site you want to view in full-screen and then from the menu select View->Full-Screen.

Happy Surfing !!!!