Previewing Documents In A Managed Application

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Tim Haughton - 20 Jul 2007 10:34 GMT

Hi, I'm trying to implement a preview feature in a managed application to
preview files of arbitrary type. Has anyone done this in a managed app? I've
seen at least one suggestion that you can host prevhost on your form, but
I'm not sure this is correct.

I've seen the IPreviewHandler and IPreviewHandlerFrame interfaces, but
haven't managed to use them from C#. They both live in shobjidl.idl, but
when I create the type library using midl.exe, the key interfaces are
missing.

Can anyone offer any assistance?

Tim

Reply to this Message

Jim Barry - 20 Jul 2007 14:21 GMT

> Hi, I'm trying to implement a preview feature in a managed
> application to preview files of arbitrary type. Has anyone done this
> in a managed app? I've seen at least one suggestion that you can host
> prevhost on your form, but I'm not sure this is correct.

I suppose you could, but I think it would be rather hard work. Also, preview handlers are new for Vista so it wouldn't be much use on previous versions. If you just want a pictorial representation of a file, you could show a thumbnail. On Vista, IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage makes this very easy. On older Windows versions, you can fall back to GetUIObjectOf/IExtractImage.

Signature

Jim Barry, MVP (Windows SDK)

Reply to this Message

Tim Haughton - 23 Jul 2007 09:00 GMT

Thanks Jim, we already have the IShellItemImage factory stuff in their, but
it's kind of a document management application, so we need the preview stuff
as well - and it's a Vista only app.

Cheers,

Tim

Tim Haughton wrote:

I suppose you could, but I think it would be rather hard work. Also, preview
handlers are new for Vista so it wouldn't be much use on previous versions.
If you just want a pictorial representation of a file, you could show a
thumbnail. On Vista, IShellItemImageFactory::GetImage makes this very easy.
On older Windows versions, you can fall back to GetUIObjectOf/IExtractImage.

Reply to this Message

Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP] - 20 Jul 2007 17:04 GMT

Tim,

Why not just declare the interfaces in C# code manually? They are not
that big, and the types are not so complex that it would be very difficult.

Signature

- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- mvp@spam.guard.caspershouse.com

> Hi, I'm trying to implement a preview feature in a managed application to
> preview files of arbitrary type. Has anyone done this in a managed app?
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> Tim

Reply to this Message

Tim Haughton - 23 Jul 2007 09:02 GMT

Thanks Nicholas, I'm heading that way, so I'll give it a look.

Tim

> Tim,
>
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>>
>> Tim

Reply to this Message

Rate this thread:

Previewing Documents In A Managed Application

Free Magazines