Set Default view for CFileDialog to Large Icon

Question

I am using CFileDialog to let the user select png images to display, But for png file I feel list view is inappropriate because user have to everytime change the view to Large icon, So what is needed is to by default set the view to "Large Icon" instead of list view. Here's is what i have done, please let me know what should i add in-order to get Large Icon view. I am using Windows 7 VS 2010 MFC C++.

CFileDialog dlg(TRUE, _T("png"), 0, OFN_FILEMUSTEXIST | OFN_HIDEREADONLY | OFN_PATHMUSTEXIST, _T("Portable Network Graphics (.png)|*.png||"));
    static char szTitle[] = _T("Select Icon");
    dlg.m_ofn.lpstrTitle = szTitle;
    static char szInitPath[] = _T("D:\\pngImagelist");
    dlg.m_ofn.lpstrInitialDir = szInitPath;

Need help of all experts out their. Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

You need to obtain IShellBrowser and use QueryActiveShellView to get the shell view, then QI for IFolderView on the shell view and call IFolderView::SetCurrentViewMode.

On the vista style file dialog (that is, if you don't disable the automatic upgrade in the constructor of CFileDialog, and you are running on Vista+), you can get IShellBrowser from the IFileDialog object via its IServiceProvider interface (QueryService with SID_STopLevelBrowser). On the Windows 2000 style file dialog, you can send an undocumented message WM_GETISHELLBROWSER to the file dialog to get its IShellBrowser interface. An example can be found at https://jiangsheng.net/2021/06/16/better-late-than-never/.

Answer 2

This is not an easy task as it requires the use of Spy++ and an understanding of the underlying Windows Shell environment. The list view control nested within the CFileDialog is actually a representation of what the Windows Shell sees. Spy++ will reveal that it's actually "ShellDLL_DefView". You can access this control using the methodology in Paul DiLascia article. It's dated, but, the idea should still be valid.