Controlling other Apps

[howester77]

How do you control other applications? for example, clicking a button would type, "http://www.yahoo.com" into firefox?

 

[JohnH]

The MS Office application suite is the only I know that got automation provided. For other applications, a common way to do automation is to use SendKeys to send sequences of keystrokes to the active window - usually an application is fully controllable by keyboard without using the mouse.

 

[howester77]

could you show me some sample code?

 

[JohnH]

You can send text and special keys like Tab Ctrl Shift etc.
To find out what keys to send to accomplish a task you just have do the operation with the keyboard and note the key sequences leading to completion of the task.

SendKeys.Send("keychars to send")

MSDN reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemwindowsformssendkeysclasstopic.asp

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

i think you could also use something along the lines of:

Try
  Dim prcFireFox As New Process = Process.Start("FireFox", "www.Yahoo.com")
Catch
  MessageBox.Show("FireFox isn't installed")
End Try

of course you'd need to check the registry for the FireFox key so you know where it's been installed to before starting it as a process