July 5th, 2005

Using script to query information from Internet Explorer windows

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some time ago, we used C++ to query information from the ShellWindows object and found it straightforward but cumbersome.

This is rather clumsy from C++ because the ShellWindows object was designed for use by a scripting language like JScript or Visual Basic.

Let’s use one of the languages the ShellWindows object was designed for to enumerate all the open shell windows. Run it with the command line cscript sample.js. 

var shellWindows = new ActiveXObject(“Shell.Application”).Windows();
for (var i = 0; i < shellWindows.Count; i++) {
  var w = shellWindows.Item(i);
  WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(w.LocationName + “=” + w.LocationURL);
}

Well that was quite a bit shorter, wasn’t it!

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Code

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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