Welcome to the PlexData Shell Extension. This software will help very easily to create and to setup an own Shell Extension. But what is a Shell Extension? In a first approximation, a Shell Extension is nothing but a menu item in the Windows Explorer’s context menu! But sometimes the creation of such an extension produces a lot of trouble, for example trying to use a 32–bit Shell Extension under a 64–bit operating system. That’s why this program exists.
Before proceeding, it could be a good idea to take a closer look at the files which are part of this program. See following table to get an impression about those files and its meaning.
| pdcmse.composer.exe | This executable starts the platform–specific user interface of the Shell Extension Composer. Additionally, it is responsible to load this user interface with appropriate access rights. That is important especially for Windows Vista and higher. |
| pdcmse.composer.chm | Wow! Just for completeness, this help file. |
| pdcmse.composer.x86 | The Shell Extension Composer’s user interface built for 32–bit platforms. |
| pdcmse.composer.x64 | The Shell Extension Composer’s user interface built for 64–bit platforms. |
| pdcmse32.dll | This is the PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file built for 32–bit platforms and is responsible to provide the Windows Explorer with all information necessary to show menu items inside the Explorer’s context menu. |
| pdcmse64.dll | This is the PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file built for 64–bit platforms and is responsible to provide the Windows Explorer with all information necessary to show menu items inside the Explorer’s context menu. |
Generally, it is quite easy to understand how the involved binary files are working. However, it is necessary to distinguish between configuration phase, registration phase and of course between runtime phase.
To get a Shell Extension available inside the Windows Explorer’s context menu it is necessary to configure it beforehand. After configuring that Shell Extension it must be put it into an appropriated configuration file. Anyway, it would be a good idea to use the Shell Extension Composer to do this.
To get a previously configured Shell Extension installed on the target system it is necessary to call the register function of one of the PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary files and to provide the filename of this configuration as parameter. But keep in mind, administration privileges are needed for this registration. After registration the configuration file is not longer needed and can be deleted because all required information will be put into the Windows Registry during registration.
At runtime the Windows Explorer will call a special COM interface for each installed Shell Extension to build its context menu from. In this case the PlexData Shell Extension reads its configuration from the Windows Registry, than it builds its menu items from and passes it back to the Windows Explorer.
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