Personalizing Windows Vista in C#

Drawer UCC - 12 in C# Personalizing Windows Vista

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Figure 3-32 Because we chose Notepad in the Other Programs section of the dialog box, Notepad now appears in the Recommended Programs section.

If you right-click a file in Windows Explorer and choose Open With from the shortcut menu, the programs that appears in the submenu are those that appear in the file type s Recommended Programs list, as shown in Figure 3-31. In Figure 3-33, for example, we ve right-clicked a .bmp file in Windows Explorer and chosen Open With, and we re presented with Microsoft Office Picture Manager, Paint, Snagit 8, and Windows Photo Gallery, the same four programs that appear in the Recommended Programs section of Figure 3-31.

Notice that the programs are listed alphabetically, and the menu does not indicate which one is the current default. The assumption is that if you ve gone to the trouble of choosing Open With, it s because you want, this time, to open the file in a nondefault program. You can use this Open With menu either to open the selected file one time in a nondefault application or to change the default. To do the latter, click Choose Default Program from the menu shown in Figure 3-33. The Open With dialog box that appears will be just like the one shown in Figure 3-31, with one major exception: the Always Use The Selected Program To Open This Kind Of File check box will be available. Note that it will be available and selected. If you don t want to make a change to the default (if you re just looking around or curious about what might show up in the Other Programs section of the dialog box), be sure to clear the check box before you select a program and click OK. (If you do unintentionally reset the default, you can always return to this Open With dialog box and fi x the problem.)

The contents of the Recommended Programs list are determined by the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\filetype \OpenWithList (where filetype is the extension of the file type in question) . So, for example, in the case shown in Figure 3-32, the \ .bmp\OpenWithList key includes five values, one of which is Notepad .exe . Deleting the unwanted item in the OpenWithList key removes it from the Recommended Programs list .

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Figure 3-33 The options that appear when you right-click a file in Windows Explorer and choose Open With are those that appear in the file type s Recommended Programs list in Control Panel.

The dialog box that appears when you choose Default Programs on the Start menu and click Set Program Access And Computer Defaults (see Figure 3-34) became a fixture of Windows at the time of Windows XP Service Pack 1. It was introduced to the operating system as a settlement condition in an antitrust suit brought by the United States Department of Justice against Microsoft. It is designed to give Windows users the option to remove access to a number of Microsoft programs that were previously tightly integrated into Windows. This list of middleware components includes the following:

Web Browser The Microsoft default program is Internet Explorer. E-mail Program Unless you specify otherwise, Windows uses Windows Mail for this function. Media Player In Windows Vista, Windows Media Player is the default utility for playing sounds, video, and media files. Instant Messaging Program Now that Windows Messenger is no longer bundled with the operating system, there is no current default messaging program. Virtual Machine for Java In the past, Microsoft included its own Java VM. Although it s no longer available from Microsoft, you can continue to use it if it s installed on your computer.