WinRT Object Libraries

[Gianni]

#include "Include\Classes\Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Webview.au3"

I can't find this file to try

[MattyD]

Apologies -here are a bunch on XAML libraries.  

Its been a while since I've looked at the library generator - I remember there were some issues around passing arrays that I wanted to fix.  I'll have a fresh look at that over the next couple of days, and then just release what I have so we've got something to work with!

XamlLibs.zip

[Gianni]

Thanks @MattyD for the new "XamlLibs"

I've been trying to create a WebView using what you said in your previous post, but I'm also getting the error -2147467259 Unspecified Error (E_FAIL) right after this line of code:

Local $pControl = IWebViewFactory4_CreateInstanceWithExecutionMode($pCtrl_Fact, $mWebViewExecutionMode["SameThread"])

Since I'm in the dark on this, ... I can only stay tuned ... 🙂

[MattyD]

Hey Gianni,

quick update, it looks like the native "Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Webview" class is not supported within Xaml islands - but we *might* be able to drop in the external "Microsoft.UI.Xaml.Controls.WebView2" control. This is part of WinUI2 I believe.

Its a bit of a rabbit hole - there's WinUI2 and  WinUI3, which seems to be quite different.  As I understand it, WinUI3 is still being developed, but its supposed to provide controls for both Win32 and UAP apps. So that might negate the need for islands, and could be the better option in the long run I guess. (albeit we'll likely need dependencies or a runtime etc.)... Either way I'll throw a bit of time at this, it'll be interesting to see what we can tap into.

[WildByDesign]

Hey Matty. I'm working on an AutoIt project called DwmColorBlurMica that basically allows for changing colors of borders and titlebars as well as applying Blur Behind to the entire client area or DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea with backdrop Mica, Acrylic, etc. This is similar to a program called MicaForEveryone.

As you probably already know, File Explorer on Windows 11 has uses WinRT for the new Details pane and also the section at the top that contains the tabs, navigation bar and command bar. Each of those sections go through a classes called Microsoft.UI.Content.DesktopChildSiteBridge.

Do you know if it is possible (in AutoIt) to modify the Xaml content within those WinRT sections?

By modifying, I am referring to changing the background color or making the background color transparent so that the underlying backdrop material or blur can be seen through since those areas are opaque by default.

There is an open source project called ExplorerBlurMica that does exactly this, modifying the Xaml content backgrounds. However, my understanding of C or C++ is limited. And my understanding of how WinRT works is also limited.

I don't know how to get more details about which WinRT classes and such are used within those Microsoft.UI.Content.DesktopChildSiteBridge sections.

Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

[MattyD]

Apologies for the late reply, I have been awol for a bit.

Generally speaking, if the object name starts with windows.* then it'll be built into the OS. So we should have a decent chance of making these ones work.  The Microsoft.* objects however are usually external. For these we'll probably need dependencies or a runtime in order to use them.

So "Microsoft.UI.Content.DesktopChildSiteBridge" looks to be part of the Windows App SDK (And maybe WinUI3??). There will be associated *.winmd files in the SDK somewhere that contain object definitions.  From these we should be able to wrap any object that we'll need  in order to change colours etc.. But the tricky bit is how to implement the external objects/controls in the first place.

Hope that makes sense.

I will eventually get around to attacking this WinUI stuff - It'll just be whenever I have the time and energy to throw at it

 

[WildByDesign]

You're right, I believe part of it is WinUI3. File Explorer has little parts of everything now which makes it a bit more complex. Also, unfortunately, I have zero knowledge of this WinRT/WinUI3 stuff at all and therefore I will likely have to not include a feature to modify these things. The complexity is just too significant for me. Thank you for your time, though. I appreciate it.

[MattyD]

Hi All,

Just a quick announcement to say I've updated the class explorer in post #1.
Some of this has been fixed for a while - but I have been a little slow in updating the attachment here.

Main changes are:

• All "statics" interfaces are now listed for classes. Previously only the first was enumerated.
• The "default interface" is now listed for classes. - Previously these were discovered, but weren't being identified as default.
• The explorer will now pull in Windows App SDK objects if the runtime has been installed. (it'll aim for SDK v1.7 which is the latest.)
• The explorer will also check in ".\metadata" for any other .winmd files that you'd like to inspect.  Just be warned that I'm not checking for conflicts. So for example - if you pop WinUI2 winmd files here, you might run into trouble if WinUI3 objects are discovered with the same name.
• leading/trailing white space characters are automatically stripped from the "filter" box.

[MattyD]

Ok, so it's far from perfect - but I've finally thrown everything together for a v1.5 release.
It's just as "point in time" upload I guess, because there has been a ton of dev since v1.4.

For those following along there shouldn't be too many surprises, we now have:

- Added a bunch of libraries that were missing in 1.4.  I believe there we a ton of statics interfaces that were missed.  
- Added _WinRT_SwitchInterface($pObj, $sIID), which is a QueryInterface, and Release call in one. (tidies code quite a lot!) 
- Added Windows.UI libraries (native XAML libs)
- Added WindowsAppSDK v1.8 libraries (WinUI3 libs)
- Removed _WinRT_Col* funcs.  That was a glorified VectorView wrapper - so just use the IVectorView lib!
- Added support for paramatised interfaces.  You can also determine PIIDs yourselves if need be.

Local $sIID_IVector_1_IAudioEffectDefinition_ = _WinRT_GetParameterizedTypeInstanceIID("Windows.Foundation.Collections.IVector`1<Windows.Media.Effects.IAudioEffectDefinition>")
_WinRT_SwitchInterface($pInNode_EffectDefs, $sIID_IVector_1_IAudioEffectDefinition_)

 -Added support for creating delegates (the "type" param is optional - but some objects won't let you register the delegate without specifying this)

Local $pFileCompletedDgt = _WinRT_CreateDelegate("_FileCompleted", "Windows.Foundation.TypedEventHandler`2<Windows.Media.Audio.AudioFileInputNode, Object>")
Local $iFileCompletedTkn = IAudioFileInputNode_AddHdlrFileCompleted($pAG_InNode, $pFileCompletedDgt)

;....

IAudioFileInputNode_RemoveHdlrFileCompleted($pAG_InNode, $iFileCompletedTkn)
_WinRT_DestroyDelegate($pFileCompletedDgt)

;....

Func _FileCompleted($pThis, $pObj, $pArgs)
    ConsoleWrite("File Completed" & @CRLF)
EndFunc

- Updated class explorer

And probably a bunch of other things that I've forgotten about over the last year!

Edited November 14, 2025 by MattyD

[MattyD]

Hi all, v1.6 is up.

• I've added a "Library Flattener" script to help with portability.  
  • We can now create a big merged file based on selected classes/interfaces etc in the folder structure. Then for subsequent WinRT releases, (In theory) run the same script over the new folder structure to update your code base!
• fixed some things around Windows.UI.Color. 
  • Its a struct that shouldn't be passed byRef, but presents the same as every other struct in the metadata (which should be passed byref) 😟 so I've written a special exception around this in the generation script.
• Some 2-byte types were being presented to dll funcs as UInt16, so these are now correctly passed as ushort for autoit. 
• Startup funcs will now fail for AutoIt x86 (we must use 64bit for the time being)
• WinUI3_Startup now returns the WinAppSDK product version that was opened.
• Tidied up some of the example scripts

[MattyD]

Hello all, I've just added v1.7 to sourceforge.

This is mainly because WinAppSDK v2.0 is now hit the "stable" channel, and I wanted to do a final build based on v1.8 of the SDK. So the next release from me will be based on v2.x.

Main changes since last time are:

• Fixed issue around Windows.Graphics.SizeInt32 - its same issue we solved for Windows.UI.Color in the last release.
• For better compatibility, I've dropped the minimum runtime version down to v1.8.0 for _WinUI3_Startup() - This is a default setting that can be changed by passing parameters to  the startup function.
• Added a WinRT_UWPIslands.au3 library to support KB input into UWP Xaml Islands (see UWP_TextBox.au3 example for usage)
• We can now deal with interface overrides as detailed here. Which means:
• we can also hook the "Application.OnLaunched()" event with the new _WinUI3_StartApp() func. This fixes a bunch of problems we were having with WinUI3. See the WinUI3_WindowBackdrops.au3 example for usage.

[MattyD]

I've just added one more zip - v1.7.1

same as above, just targeting WinAppSDK v2.0 instead of v1.8. 
Remember update your runtime! We want a x64 variant of a v2.0.x release for this on the stable channel. (so ATM that's this one!)

Direct Links to the 2 packages...

WinRT v1.7.1 (WinAppSDK v2.0 based)

WinRT V1,7 (WinAppSDK v1.8 based)

[water]

Added to the Wiki  

[mLipok]

Would you be so nice and publish this on github ?

 

[MattyD]

Ok I'll give it a go, but don't count on it being updated regularly!

https://github.com/MattyD-87/AutoIt-WinRT

Also, Examples/TestVideo.mp4 was too large to commit - so you may need to point one of the examples to a different video!