A simple application launcher

As I promised on my last post, here is the code for a very simple application launcher. It essentially lists all the applications registered in the "Programs" folder of your Windows Mobile device and launches them when the user clicks the corresponding list item.

I have to confess that I went into a bit of an ordeal in order to implement this very simple application. Quite simply because I tried to outsmart the Windows Mobile shell and to collect all the required information from the .lnk files. If you are on this same path, please read these words carefully: all has been done for you already, so don't try to reinvent the wheel.

My first pain was to get the icons from the shortcuts. You can almost do this by using ExtractIconEx, but this function will not work for some of the system DLLs, such as ceshell.dll. Why? I really don't know why, but the "Search" application icon (the magnifying glass) is impossible to get to by using this function. After asking around a bit, I was steered to the right direction by Christopher Fairbairn: use SHGetFileInfo. The only caveat is that you must use this function against the .lnk file itself, not against the target. If you do so, your icons will show up just right as you can see from the image.

The item name is taken from the shortcut file name - just remove the extension and the path. To make this easier I creted a very simple class named CFilePath that, for the time being, contains only one function: GetFileNameWithoutExtension (now where have I seen a similar function name?).

Finally, in order to execute the application, you just send the full .lnk file name to the ShellExecuteEx function and you are done with it. No need to mess around with the .lnk file format and all of its quirks.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the sample code: AppStart00.zip