How to customize the windows shell to display files from a remote source and allow custom drawing?

Question

Is it possible, (via some shell extension or similar) to customize the Windows shell (explorer.exe) to accomplish the following?

Make it, upon navigating to a predefined path:

1. draw over its surface - custom background, or even add custom forms for data input
2. display custom listview items based on the "virtual" path provided (something analogous to what explorer is doing when browsing a FTP repository - the items shown are not contents of a local folder, but rather some "virtual" items physically located on the FTP server)

The idea is to reuse the visage and navigation elements of Explorer without re-implementing the whole functionality and make it look native on all Windows versions for a remote file browser (file lists+files alone served by a custom web service).

Answer 1

I think you need to implement a Explorer Namespace Extension. There is some good information floating around on codeproject etc that you will probably need since the official documentation is not the best.