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How to manipulate a control without any pattern implemented?

I'm trying to implement the automation test via UIAutomation for our project. But lots of the controls are not standrad, and proper patterns are also not implemented for that controls. How should I to manipulate the controls via UIAutomation framework in this case?
For example, a button in our product is implemented via a Pane, and the invoked pattern is not implemented as well. How should I click the button? (To avoid installing VS on the test machine, I don't want to use Mouse.Click() in Microsoft.VisiualStudio.TestTools.UITesting namespace) Is there a way to do that only using UIAutomation framework or something else embedded in .net framework? Thanks in advance! (If the proper pattern is implemented, Below code will work. And as a new user, I cannot post the screenshot for your reference, sorry!)
object temp = null;
if (btnTest.TryGetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern, out temp))
{
InvokePattern btnTestPattern = temp as InvokePattern;
btnTestPattern.Invoke();
}

The only way to interact when Control Patterns are not implemented is to go clicking around stuff.
I would suggest try following to avoid maximum errors.
Before sending the click, make sure the parent of button(pane or window is set to foreground)
Instead of sending the click to corner of the AutomationElement, try sending it in midpoint, of the element,
Also, try hovering over the element first, the wait like 200ms, and then send click, So that you are sure to see execution.[Trust me, this helps debugging a lot and avoids many issues.]

The best thing would be, if those guys who implement the system would implement server-side UIA provider to their UI Elements!
But often that's not possible..., I used the following workaround (at least for clicking/toggling):
AutomationElement yourAE = ...// some code to find the right AutomationElement (AE)
clickablePoint = yourAE.GetClickablePoint();
also BoundingRectangleProperty could be of help
If you receive that clickable point you can use
System.Windows.Forms.Cursor.Position = new System.Drawing.Point((int)clickablePoint.X, (int)clickablePoint.Y);
to move to the location, and than click it via InputSimulator or some win32 (user32.dll) commands.
(note: of course you can also use InputSimulator or win32 to move the mouse - but I had some problems with the InputSimulator when it came to several screens with different locations or resolutions - so Cursor.Position was the easiest approach, which is also very reliable)

caliburn micro send data to the dialog

and sorry for the noobness, i'm fairly new to the framework, but i'm beginning to understand it and it's inner workings.
simply put what i want is this:
the shellview recieves an event, from something that happened on a view, logs the problem and shows a dialog informing the user that something wrong happened.
for the creation of the dialog i used this thread and it works without any problems, but i'm lost on how to set the property Message on the view/ViewModel.
help would be appreciated
thanks in advance

I would use the WindowManager directly. Alternatively, you could adapt the code to create a ShowDialog constructor which takes an existing instance of your dialog view model.
In fact that code is a bit messy, ShowDialog should really be generic and take the type of the dialog view model, so that a cast isn't required in order to get the dialog result.

How to customize a CodedUI test search property - specifically window title

Suppose I am trying to automate notepad, and depending on what is open, the tile of the window is either "Notepad", "Notepad - letter_to_boyfriend.txt", "Notepad - Readme.txt", etc.
When I recorded the coded ui test, it assumed the title "Notepad". Now I want to customize the test somehow, so that any title that looks like "Notepad*" would be good enough.
How can I do so? Sorry, I do not have recorded code to share at the moment, but I might later. Hopefully it is not that hard to reproduce.
It has got to be the search property.
Thanks in advance.

Doubleclick on the [mapname].uitest, in the UI Control Map select your window, press F4 to see properties, and finally in Search Properties change the Operator from EqualsTo to Contains and the Value to "Notepad".

Playback.PlaybackSettings.SmartMatchOptions = SmartMatchOptions.TopLevelWindow;
For more help: Here

How can I get the reference to currently active modal form?

I am writing a small class for driving integration testing of a win form application. The test driver class has access to the main Form and looks up the control that needs to be used by name, and uses it to drive the test. To find the control I am traversing the Control.Controls tree. However, I get stuck when I want to get to controls in a dialog window (a custom form shown as a dialog). How can I get hold of it?

You can get a reference to the currently active form by using the static Form.ActiveForm property.
Edit: If no Form has the focus, Form.ActiveForm will return null.
One way to get around this is to use the Application.OpenForms collection and retrieve the last item, witch will be the active Form when it is displayed using ShowDialog:
// using Linq:
var lastOpenedForm = Application.OpenForms.Cast<Form>().Last()
// or (without Linq):
var lastOpenedForm = Application.OpenForms[Application.OpenForms.Count - 1]

I'm not sure if you can access controls on a pre-built dialog box; they seem all packaged together. You may have more luck building a dialog box of your own that does what you want it to do. Then you can access the .Controls inside of it.

Correct me if i'm wrong, though, it sounds as if you are possibly attempting to access the controls on the dialog form when it's not quite possible to.
What I mean is, ShowDialog will "hold up" the thread that the form was created on and will not return control to the application (or, your test class) until ShowDialog has finished processing, in which case your user code would continue on its path.
Try accessing or manipulating the controls from a separate thread (in this case, refactor the test driver class to spawn a separate thread for each new form that must be displayed and tested).

.Net C# Design View errors

I have subclassed a Treeview and on instantiation it loads a new ImageList (and the associated Images).
Whenever I switch to the designer view, it's also trying to run this code, however the images aren't in the designer's path, so it crashes. I ended up putting in a hack to see if the current directory is "Visual Studio", then do nothing... but that's so ugly.
I find this happening for other things. If a control is trying to use objects during load/initalization that are only available while the program is running, then the Design View cannot bring up the control.
But is there a way to get around this?
I guess what I'm hoping for is having a try/catch for the Designer (only) with the ability to ignore a few errors I know will be happening (like FileNotFoundException, etc.).
Thanks

Everything that inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Control has a DesignMode property that returns a boolean indicating if you are in design mode or not. You could use this to determine when to/when not to load external resources.

Usually it is better to move the loading of these resources to an override of OnLoad as they are rarely required directly at construction. This fixes the issue you are seeing and means that only trees which get displayed at least once will perform these additional resource loading steps.
Otherwise, you can just exclude these steps during design time by checking the DesignMode property and acting accordingly.

This is a fine pattern to use if you're making a control library with a sample of images when shown in the designer or hook ins to other designer features but as a pattern for development I'm not sure it's very effective.
I would suggest shifting your "business logic" (in this case your loading of certain images into a treeview) outside of the bounds of your treeview control. In your case I would place the logic within the Load event of the form that the control is inside:
public void Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string path = "c:\somePath\toAwesome\Images";
myFunkyTreeView.AddImages(path);
}
For larger apps I personally think you want to shift the logic even out of the forms themselves, but this is debatable measure as it requires additional plumbing as a trade-off for the flexibility this provides.

Thanks for pointing me in the right directioon guys.
I had tried registering to the OnLoad event, but that event is triggered when the Design View comes up, so that didn't quite work for me (am I doing something wrong?).
Anyway, I looked a bit more into the DesignMode property. It can only work for Controls, and sometimes your object may not even be a control.
So here's the answer I prefer:
if (LicenseManager.UsageMode == LicenseUsageMode.Designtime) {
// design-time stuff
} else {
// run-time stuff
}
Found it here.