Detecting other open windows and their location

Thread view:

Sean Knapp - 24 Jun 2006 05:49 GMT

Hi all,

I assume this is possible, but have no idea where to start... what I
need to do is get a list of other windows that are open (i.e. firefox,
eclipse, itunes, etc) and ideally some additional information about
them such as location, window title, etc.

Any advice is very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Sean

Reply to this Message

Matt Humphrey - 24 Jun 2006 13:37 GMT

> Hi all,
>
> I assume this is possible, but have no idea where to start... what I
> need to do is get a list of other windows that are open (i.e. firefox,
> eclipse, itunes, etc) and ideally some additional information about
> them such as location, window title, etc.

There's nothing implicit in Java (especially because of platform
independence) for doing this. This leaves you with 2 options: Find where
someone has written a JNI library to Windows for retrieving this information
or study Windows yourself and produce such a library.

One such library may be WinPack
http://www.jniwrapper.com/pages/winpack/overview
but you'll have to see for youself if it's as extensive as you need. It
comes from JNIWrapper http://www.jniwrapper.com/pages/winpack/overview
A Java interface to Windows is likely to be large and complex, so you may
have to do some digging to to find a free version. Try searching on (jni
"windows api")

If you have to do it yourself, you can get away without writing JNI directly
by using xFunction http://www.excelsior-usa.com/xfunction.html or a system
like SWIG http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Java.html#n2

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey matth@ivizNOSPAM.com http://www.iviz.com/

Reply to this Message

Kurt M Peters - 24 Jun 2006 19:39 GMT

Can't you just do a getBounds on the frame of interest to find out how big
and where the windows are?
Kurt

>> Hi all,
>>
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> Cheers,
> Matt Humphrey matth@ivizNOSPAM.com http://www.iviz.com/

Reply to this Message

Sean Knapp - 24 Jun 2006 20:19 GMT

Hi Kurt,

Will that work? How do I get access to a frame object of another
program that I don't have control of?

Thanks,
Sean

> Can't you just do a getBounds on the frame of interest to find out how big
> and where the windows are?
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
> > Cheers,
> > Matt Humphrey matth@ivizNOSPAM.com http://www.iviz.com/

Reply to this Message

Detecting other open windows and their location

Free Magazines