Hello,
A few years back there were a lot of people using VB to modify AOL software. They could do things like add items or selections to the menu. And also interact with the AOL software itself.
Now I did have some BAS files that had methods that allowed me to do some of this, and I understand that they were using Windows API functions like gethandle, getparent, findchild etc. to do some of this.
So my questions are:
1. Are there any current tutorials on this?
2. How would you add items to the menu bar of an application? (I do not mean in the source code. I mean if you just had the executable for a program but wanted to do this like many did with AOL.)
3. Do some applications have safeguards that will prevent this?
Thank you.
Mark
Comments
Hello,
In case anyone wants to see an example of what I am talking about, I did find some old AOL modification source which includes some BAS files.
But I do not think that any of these actually modified the menu bar.
Mark
: A few years back there were a lot of people using VB to modify AOL software. They could do things like add items or selections to the menu. And also interact with the AOL software itself.
: Now I did have some BAS files that had methods that allowed me to do some of this, and I understand that they were using Windows API functions like gethandle, getparent, findchild etc. to do some of this.
:
I've seen a few of those myself. It was interesting learning back then...
: 1. Are there any current tutorials on this?
Not that I'm aware of. What is it you're interested in?
: 2. How would you add items to the menu bar of an application? (I do not mean in the source code. I mean if you just had the executable for a program but wanted to do this like many did with AOL.)
:
For starters, you don't use VB. VB can't subclass across threads and you'd have to subclass to be able to to get the menu click events.
You can still add menu items though it wouldn't really do you any good. You'd use the AppendMenu API to do so.
: 3. Do some applications have safeguards that will prevent this?
Probably not, though I wouldn't bet on it. A "safeguard" is that some apps don't use the normal menu controls so the APIs could end up adding a whole new menu and/or causing your or their app to crash.
There is actually nothing that I wanted to do, I was sort of curious. I have done C programming for some time and also some web work. And I am registered on a site that allows Webmasters and others to place projects up. And the programmers are allowed to bid on the projects. This one guy, probably a kid, wanted a "speed hack" for a game called Dark Ages. So as I was wondering how I could write a program that interfaced with that software I remembered the old AOL days.
I can understand that perfectly...
: I have done C programming for some time
Since you were curious: C/C++ would be the most likely language for doing it in.