[fpc-pascal] Want to create a program launcher for Windows 11, suggestions please.

[Bo Berglund]

On Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:46:06 +0200, Bo Berglund via fpc-pascal
<fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:

>On Mon, 8 Sep 2025 09:50:10 -0500, Hairy Pixels via fpc-pascal
><fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 8, 2025 at 9:18:42?PM, Bo Berglund via fpc-pascal <
>>fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I have written a good many Windows appliocations using Lazarus/FreePascal
>>> but I
>>> have never gone into these Windows internals before...
>>>
>>> Grateful for any help!
>>>
>>
>>I was curious so I put your question into ChatGPT and got some answers that
>>looked interesting. I’ve barely done any Windows development so I don’t
>>know the internals but I found ChatGPT to be really good for this kind of
>>research.
>>
>>Sorry that’s a cheap answer :)
>
>I too was using ChatGPT as helper during my conversion to Win11.
>When I discovered that the solution that resulted did not work for me and
>mentioned this fpc idea for a replacement it came back with a long Lazarus/Fpc
>suggestion. :-)
>
>But I thought that asking here would be a safer way...
>Before I go further I need to make sure I have a working Lazarus/FPC
>installation on my Windows11 machine. In recent years I have done the bulk of my
>new coding on Linux platforms...
>
>I have used FpcUpDeluxe the last times I installed on Windows and that gave me
>Lazarus 3.4 so I just have to find its launcher. All of my day-to-day programs
>were launched from the QuickLaunch toolbar Microsoft has decided to remove...

So going onwards now, what happens if I have a form and there is a mouse event
when one drags a shortcut icon from the Windows desktop amd drops it onto the
form? Of course it must remain on the desktop too...

Say I dragged the Lazarus 3.4 icon to the form and dropped it, will there be
some way to extract what it was that was dropped and then extract the built-in
icon image so it could be placed on the form?
Can the application launch information also be extracted in this case (name and
path to the executable and any arguments).
If so how is it done?

I want to create an image to drop onto my form which displays the actual
application icon.
And it will have an on-click event handler which would launch the application on
click.

So the main issues here are:
- How to extract the icon image?
- how to extract the shortcut target (path to application and any arguments
needed)

If I can get that I can probably create my own application launcher similar to
the now removed Windows Quick Launch Toolbar.

Of course I could create a simpler application with an ini file config where the
application path is supplied there and the data extraction then becomes
simnpler.
It would be nice with the drag-drop though in order to populate the launcher.


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden