Re: [GD-Windows] Hijacking application

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

Well, under Windows, if you can get the window handle, there's a lot you 
can hook, and you can inspect most of the standard windows components and 
extract the data they display. There are QA "robot" types of applications 
that can record and play back all sorts of things, and then examine the 
contents of the various components to see if they contain what they should.

But the more an app uses nonstandard controls, the less you can do with it. 
And if there's graphics or internal data that doesn't show up readily in 
the UI, it's pretty tough to imagine how you'd get in by other than 
explicit reverse-engineering.

         Kent


At 09:51 PM 8/18/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>I have a feeling this can't be done, but I figured I'd ask the list
>anyways just in case.
>
>Say I want to write a plug-in for random application XYZ.  XYZ,
>however, may not have a plug-in API or it may be broken.  Use Notepad
>as an example.
>
>If I wanted to add a plug-in, it seems like it would be pretty much
>impossible unless my plug-in didn't require any of the application's
>other data.
>
>I swore there were a few plug-ins I've seen that have forced their way
>into an application, but I can't think of what they might be now.  The
>obvious ones are like Visual Assist, Max plug-ins, Maya plug-ins,
>Photoshop plug-ins, VS plug-ins, etc. but those all have registered
>APIs.  I've seen screenshots of people that have retrofitted a new
>menu into Notepad just to prove it can be done, but I'm not sure what
>the point of that is.
>
>The typical way you do this is a pretty convoluted process involving
>subclassing and message hooks, but even then you can only trap new
>menu items and maybe a couple of key messages like WM_DESTROY.  You
>obviously can't grab application data and do anything meaningful with
>it.
>
>Brian
>
>
>
>
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Kent Quirk, CTO, CogniToy
ken...@co...
http://www.cognitoy.com