How to control buttons in other applications

Question

I'm a final year high school student and want to help my father secure his computer. He isn't an IT genius and it's hard for him to remember all the steps he must do in spybot and avast.

I'm trying to create a c# windows application that would have just a next button that would in turn click the correct button in the security applications. Is there a simple way (I'm pretty new to c, used pascal for 3 years) to do this? I've found something about using autoit, but that requires me to import a dll. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Yes, there is a simple way. Look for ui automation frameworks like this one:

http://white.codeplex.com/

Just study all examples and you'll get the idea.

Answer 2

This is probably a good task for a simple scripting language (Perl). Instead of compiling, and recompiling for config changes, etc. You can look at the fairly easy to use Perl module: http://sourceforge.net/projects/winguitest

Follow the other solutions if you are hooked on the C# idea (perhaps for learning; which is cool). But I wouldn't recommend a C# application for stability or maintainability in this case.