c# - HowTo Disable WebBrowser 'Click Sound' in your app only

Question

The 'click sound' in question is actually a system wide preference, so I only want it to be disabled when my application has focus and then re-enable when the application closes/loses focus.

Originally, I wanted to ask this question here on stackoverflow, but I was not yet in the beta. So, after googling for the answer and finding only a little bit of information on it I came up with the following and decided to post it here now that I'm in the beta.

using System;
using Microsoft.Win32;

namespace HowTo
{
    class WebClickSound
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Enables or disables the web browser navigating click sound.
        /// </summary>
        public static bool Enabled
        {
            get
            {
                RegistryKey key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(@"AppEventsSchemesAppsExplorerNavigating.Current");
                string keyValue = (string)key.GetValue(null);
                return String.IsNullOrEmpty(keyValue) == false && keyValue != """";
            }
            set
            {
                string keyValue;

                if (value)
                {
                    keyValue = "%SystemRoot%\Media";
                    if (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major == 5 && Environment.OSVersion.Version.Minor > 0)
                    {
                        // XP
                        keyValue += "Windows XP Start.wav";
                    }
                    else if (Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major == 6)
                    {
                        // Vista
                        keyValue += "Windows Navigation Start.wav";
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        // Don't know the file name so I won't be able to re-enable it
                        return;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    keyValue = """";
                }

                // Open and set the key that points to the file
                RegistryKey key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(@"AppEventsSchemesAppsExplorerNavigating.Current", true);
                key.SetValue(null, keyValue,  RegistryValueKind.ExpandString);
                isEnabled = value;
            }
        }
    }
}

Then in the main form we use the above code in these 3 events:

• Activated
• Deactivated

• FormClosing

  private void Form1_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      // Disable the sound when the program has focus
      WebClickSound.Enabled = false;
  }
  
  private void Form1_Deactivate(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      // Enable the sound when the program is out of focus
      WebClickSound.Enabled = true;
  }
  
  private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
  {
      // Enable the sound on app exit
      WebClickSound.Enabled = true;
  }
  

The one problem I see currently is if the program crashes they won't have the click sound until they re-launch my application, but they wouldn't know to do that.

What do you guys think? Is this a good solution? What improvements can be made?

Answer 1

const int FEATURE_DISABLE_NAVIGATION_SOUNDS = 21;
const int SET_FEATURE_ON_PROCESS = 0x00000002;

[DllImport("urlmon.dll")]
[PreserveSig]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Error)]
static extern int CoInternetSetFeatureEnabled(int FeatureEntry,
                                              [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwFlags,
                                              bool fEnable);

static void DisableClickSounds()
{
    CoInternetSetFeatureEnabled(FEATURE_DISABLE_NAVIGATION_SOUNDS,
                                SET_FEATURE_ON_PROCESS,
                                true);
}