Shortcut Menu Shell Extensions are used to add custom menu items to file's pop-up menus. Use TSxContextMenu to add this feature to your application.

    The Shortcut Menu handler is an ActiveX library like all other Shell Extensions. The first step to do is to create a new ActiveX Library. Create it with the following sequence of operations: open the Repository dialog using File | New | Other... menu, then select the ActiveX tab and click the ActiveX Library icon.

Fig. 1. New ActiveX Library creation.

    Save the created project.

    The next step is to add the instance of TSxDataModule to the project. Every Shell+ component should be placed on SxDataModule ¹. This special descendant of TDataModule supplies several internal methods that allow Shell+ components to safely operates in multiple Shell threads and automates their registration and initialization. Note that you can place several Shell+ components onto the same SxDataModule as well as you can add multiple TSxDataModule instances to your project. It is easy to add new SxDataModule to the project - just click corresponding icon in the Repository:

Fig. 2. How to create new SxDataModule instance.

    You can save the project now.

Add the TSxContextMenu now. This component automates the menu drawing and allows you to forget about communication with Shell. This component uses TSxPopupMenu which is simply standard Delphi's TPopupMenu component ancestor. In the TsxPopupMenu you can specify the menu items by simple and know way - using standard Menu Editor. So add the TSxPopupMenu to the module and set the TSxContextMenu.ContextMenu property to it.

    Look on the properties of TSxContextMenu component:

Table 1. TSxContextMenu component properties

    Set component properties as shown below:

Fig 3. TSxContextMenu properties sample

    The next step is to design the menu. Do it as usual with native TPopupMenu designer.

    Save the project and compile it - it is ready now! As well as any other ActiveX library the Shell+ project requires registration. You can register it in several ways:

• from command prompt using MS regsvr32 utility: regsvr32.exe Project1.dll
• from command prompt using Borland's tregsvr utility: tregsvr Project1.dll

To know more about shell extension installation please follow the link.

The final step is to test the extension library. Create the new text document on the desktop or in any folder. You can use the New | Text Document context menu for this purpose. Right click the newly created file. You should see several new menu items in it:

    Don't forget to uninstall the example when all tests are finished. Note that it is an example only and it will show its confirmation window until you will not unregister it. As well as installation the uninstallation can be done in many ways:

• from command prompt using MS regsvr32 utility: regsvr32.exe /u Project1.dll
• from command prompt using Borland's tregsvr utility: tregsvr -u Project1.dll

The detailed information about extension uninstallation is available here.