How can I create my custom Shell Context Handlers for Windows?

Question

Problem

Language: C# 2.0 or later

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I would like to register context handlers to create menues when the user right clicks certain files (in my case *.e

Answer 1

While others already mentioned that writing shell extensions in pure .NET is a bad idea due to framework conflicts, you should still note that:

1. There are 3rd party drivers out there (see Eldos or LogicNP) that do the unmanaged side for you, allowing you to write managed code that talks to the native driver, thus preventing shell-related CLR version conflicts.

2. A recent MSDN article mentioned that Microsoft has solved this problem for the CoreCLR, as used by Silverlight. They've accomplished this by allowing multiple versions of the CLR to run in the same process, thus fixing the problem. The author further stated that this fix in Silverlight will be rolled into future versions of the full CLR. (Meaning, in the future, it will be quite feasible to write shell extensions in managed code.)