WinActivate keeps opening a new tab

[anthonyjr2]

I have come across a weird issue that I am not sure how to solve. For some reason, whenever I call WinActivate in certain scenarios instead of opening the single window that already exists, it will create a new blank tab. It should be able to be recreated with this:

AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)

Sleep(1000)

For $i=0 To 10
    WinActivate("Internet Explorer")
Next

I am not actually doing this in my code, it is just to demonstrate the fact that new tabs keep popping up. Does anyone know why this happens?

 

EDIT: So I am not sure how reproducible this is, because it only happens every once in a while for me. I will update with more info if I find out anything.

Edited June 16, 2017 by anthonyjr2

[anthonyjr2]

Bump, I'm still seeing this issue.

[Juvigy]

Use the IE UDF for this. WinActivate will open a new tab with the default start page if i is not already opened.

[anthonyjr2]

I am using the IE UDF with an _IEAttach(). This problem occurs when I eventually want to switch back to the IE window from another program on my computer. Instead of going to my already-created tab it decides to create a blank new one.

[water]

Why should we get a new tab in IE when we just want to activate the window (independant of the application)?
Could this be a bug?

[anthonyjr2]

1 minute ago, water said:

Could this be a bug?

It is possible. Did the issue happen to you when you ran my example code in my first post? I thought it was very strange that it opened a new tab as well.

[water]

I was running your modified code:

#include <Array.au3>
AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)
$aArray = WinList("Internet Explorer")
_ArrayDisplay($aArray)
$RC = WinActivate("Internet Explorer")
MsgBox(0, "", $RC & "-" & @error & "-" & @extended)
Exit

and it happened 1 out of 5 to 10 times.
I wonder why WinList returns much more Windows (even one empty tab) when I do not get some of them in the task bar.
Windows 7 with IE11.

[anthonyjr2]

I'm on Windows 10 with IE11. The other weird thing is that it doesn't seem to ever open more than one new tab, even running it for 30+ iterations. Is there any way to see the source code of built-in functions such as WinActivate? They wouldn't be in the Include folder or anything. This bug basically makes it impossible to run one of my programs I've been working on, so I'll be adamant in trying to find a solution.

[water]

You could run WinList, grab the needed window and use WinActivate passing the Window handle from Winlist.
Drop

AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)

then.
Maybe IE creates hidden tabs (which get displayed by WinList). When using substring to match window titles the hidden tab gets selected and displayed by accident
 

[anthonyjr2]

You could totally be right about the hidden tabs thing. I will try dropping the substring match and see how it works. It's just slightly more inconvenient 

Although I definitely think it is an interesting bug.

[water]

I think it is the better solution as you activate the different IE windows in a controlled manner
Even when it takes two minutes more to code

[Juvigy]

16 hours ago, anthonyjr2 said:

I am using the IE UDF with an _IEAttach(). This problem occurs when I eventually want to switch back to the IE window from another program on my computer. Instead of going to my already-created tab it decides to create a blank new one.

IEAtach will attach to any IE window - no matter who created them. I dont understand why you need to use WinActivate for that !

[anthonyjr2]

5 hours ago, Juvigy said:

I dont understand why you need to use WinActivate for that

Because I am switching between other programs other than IE. So I need to eventually go back to the IE window. This has nothing to do with the IE UDF or _IEAttach at all.

[Juvigy]

I still dont get it. You can switch between programs and still after that you can use IEAtach to attach to the IE window. Use winactivate to activate other programs , but for switching to IE use the IE UDF.

[anthonyjr2]

Because I have already attached to the window once in the beginning of the script. There is no reason for me to attach to the window every time I want to bring it to the front and make it active again when I already have the handle from the first attach. As I stated earlier I am already using the IE UDF, the problem I was having has nothing to do with that.

[Danp2]

Since you already have the IE object reference, have you tried just using it without performing the WinActivate? If so, what was the outcome?

[anthonyjr2]

That works fine, the only issue is that I need to do some OCR on the window, which is why I need it to be the topmost window. Otherwise yeah I could just perform actions without it being active.

I realize that this is getting slightly off topic. In any case my problem is basically resolved after dropping WinTitleMatchMode = 2, I just had to be more specific in the WinActivate. This definitely makes me think that water was correct in his assumption about the blank hidden IE windows.

Edited June 21, 2017 by anthonyjr2

[Danp2]

Have you tried this --

WinActivate(HWnd($oIE.hWnd))

where $oIE is the existing reference to your IE tab?

[Juvigy]

If you have the reference to the IE tab - you can activate it using the IE DOM.

[anthonyjr2]

@Danp2 I'll give that a shot when I get a chance.

@Juvigy Do you mean doing it the way Danp2 suggested?