Is it possible to use wshshell.appactivate to switch between multiple internet explorer windows?
I am trying to write a script that will bring different instances of internet explorer in kiosk mode to the front. The end goal is to make it look like it's going from one web page to the next. I tried using wshshell.sendkey but it doesn't look smooth with the open webpage dialog popping up.
I played with this for a few days. We can get an hwnd from IE, but not a PID. So the only way I can see to match HWnd to PID is call a Win32API call. So how to do that in VBS.
All computers have 4 VB.NET compilers installed. So all we need do is write a com server that wraps GetWindowThreadProcessId.
In your script write out the following line to a text file. I repurposed a different script for this so method names are silly.
Imports System
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Imports Microsoft.Win32
Imports System.Net.Mail
Namespace SendMail
<Guid("85B4AD6D-2E89-4869-9BBC-69E42738FCFC"), _
InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIDispatch)> _
Public Interface _SendMail
<DispId(1)> Function Send(ByVal hWnd As Integer) As Integer
End Interface
<Guid("C91EDEB2-3756-4893-905B-0E4E2150C7FD"), _
ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None), _
ProgId("Scripting.SendMail")> Public Class SendMail
Implements _SendMail
Public SendMail()
Public Declare Auto Function GetWindowThreadProcessId Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowThreadProcessId" (ByVal hwnd As Integer, ByRef lpdwProcessId As Integer) As Integer
Public Function Send(HWnd as Integer) As Integer Implements _SendMail.Send
Dim X as Integer
Dim M as Integer
M=1
X=GetWindowThreadProcessID(HWnd,M)
msgbox(X & " " & M & " " & HWnd & " " & Err.LastDllError)
Send = M
End Function
End Class
End Namespace
Then to compile WSHShell.Run the following commands hidden fixing paths.
"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\vbc.exe" /target:library /out:"%userprofile%\desktop\sendmail\sendmail.dll" "%userprofile%\desktop\sendmail\sendmail.cls" /verbose
"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\regasm" /codebase "%userprofile%\desktop\sendmail\sendmail.dll" /tlb:"%userprofile%\desktop\sendmail\sendmail.tlb" /v
Then to use in script
Set x = CreateObject("Scripting.SendMail")
Msgbox x.Send(&h1a013e)
Now I've generated the GUID's for this purpose of creating com objects on the fly. As they are in now public code you (AND ANYONE ELSE COPYING THIS) must destroy the object in your script. Run the Regasm command with /u. Or generate new GUIDs.
You can enumerate all explorer/internet explorer windows.
From Help
Windows Method
Creates and returns a ShellWindows object. This object represents a collection of all of the open windows that belong to the Shell.
Syntax
oWindows = Shell.Windows()
Return Value
Object reference to the ShellWindows object.
Examples
The following example uses Windows to retrieve the ShellWindows object and display a count of the number of items that it contains. Proper usage is shown for Microsoft JScript, Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), and Visual Basic. VBScript:
Show Example
<script language="VBScript">
function fnShellWindowsVB()
dim objShell
dim objShellWindows
set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
set objShellWindows = objShell.Windows
if (not objShellWindows is nothing) then
alert(objShellWindows.Count)
end if
set objShellWindows = nothing
set objShell = nothing
end function
</script>
But I don't know how this would help unless they have different titlebar text. Appactivate is the only windows' management command available to scripting.
Also appactivate returns a value saying if it made the window active or not. If you try to activate an active window it fails as the window is already active.
You can do process switching, but usually web pages are in the same process. AppActivate takes a PID
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_Process")
For Each objItem in colItems
msgbox objItem.ProcessID & " " & objItem.Caption
Next
