Fast window switching: pin Firefox in the task bar in the first position (so that it’s always the same number), and Win+1 will do roughly what your RAlt+1 hotkey does out of the box in Windows 10.
In Praise of AutoHotKey
141–150 of 220 posts
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. He could have written his own program and just used it, and IT would never have gotten involved. Because it was using a 3rd party tool, IT got lazy. My company, BTW, not only explicitly allows AHK, they actually encourage it. I mean, if you're going to give people compilers to write arbitrary code, this is not worse.
It seems weird to expect someone with no programming training (an IT guy) to either build or sign off on something they have no understanding of. In large/high stakes settings, being risk averse and knowing the limits of your understanding are very good traits. Imho, this IT guy did his job, more or less. What was the testing plan for this AHK script? What edge cases were considered? Unit tests, integ tests.... was t…
why even have programmers if they have to convince someone that doesn't understand what they're doing that it's been implemented correctly? the justification of an ignorant person not understanding it (assuming, i guess(?), that they are also incapable of learning it, apparently?) and thus not allowing a massively more efficient improvement to be put in place as somehow a job well done seems crazy to me. (at least in theory managers are supposed to provide something to the table). well, i guess to all the other programmers who, like me, leave any and all places like this. i acknowledge that not everyone is wired the same way, but it just seems blatantly obvious that the left hand wants "innovation" and the right hand... does stuff like this.
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#143I actually built a micro break reminder in AutoHotkey yesterday; every 30 minutes a (top-most) message box shows up, telling me to move and look out a window. The message box auto-closes after 30 seconds.
Extremely simple! https://gist.github.com/cdaven/360f0509f823d309e1b9de67bd826...
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#144I've started[1] to do similar things on macOS using Hammerspoon[2]. So far I've set it up to let me: 1. Use shift when pasting something to simulate typing in the text instead, getting around websites that block pasting. 2. Use ";" as a hyper key. By holding it down and pressing another key, I can switch between specific programs without cycling. I can also use hjkl as arrow keys. 3. Automatically switch audio input…
> getting around websites that block pasting. This one really drives me mad. Is there really any legit reason to this? By the way my hack is I paste it in the address bar, then just drag-drop into the field. Works 50% of the time or more (fails when a lot of these stupid websites don't use placeholder attribute but rather use some sort of Javascript for the placeholder text)
>> getting around websites that block pasting.
> This one really drives me mad. Is there really any legit reason to this?
No. Which is why I set the about:config option "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" in Firefox to false. That turns off the ability of websites to block pasting in Firefox.
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#145Something I don't see mentioned in this thread is that Autohotkey is more than just hotkeys. It can also create basic GUIs using native Windows widgets, and is probably the fastest way of producing a GUI on windows (the resulting script can be bundled into an .exe file)
Quick Access Popup is a full-blown, highly configurable launcher for Windows. I just started using it last week, fell in love with it, and was shocked to discover it's written in AHK.
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would they get in trouble when someone used an automation tool that submitted hundreds of thousands of empty or even worse completely incorrect records, with no reconciliation plan? As I said in my comments above, it's a question of who owns the data. In general, other than things like financial information and HR records, IT does not own the data in our company. They provide lots of services (version control, Jira…
> As I said in my comments above, it's a question of who owns the data. In general, other than things like financial information and HR records, IT does not own the data in our company. They provide lots of services (version control, Jira boards, etc). They often are responsible for backing them up at a specified interval (daily, etc). And they are responsible for configuring them to be secure (which may involve shut…
> Not sure what this has to do with the situation at hand, where a user who was a part of a human data entry team dealing with metrics around oil rigs and live oil pipeline data decided to automate their data entry dayjob.
You keep bringing up the oil fields, oil pipeline, etc. The original commented did not indicate that this is the purpose, and nor did he indicate the importance of said data, or the cost of the loss. I think I have an idea to what he is referring to, and the data is not that critically important. If it has some importance, there will be a paper trail. As another commenter said, they either have a process to audit the validity of data entry or they don't. Whether it was hand entered or automated is irrelevant.
Throughout this thread you've been arguing from extremes, invoking cases where such a thing could be disastrous, etc and using that as a general purpose argument. No one is saying there aren't occasions where IT should not interfere - I've acknowledged that there are cases where they should. There's nothing to indicate that the original commenters use case is one of those.
And this is what people in the thread are caring about: Someone who has no idea about the problem interfering with a perfectly fine methodology.
I could go on and address your other points in this and other comments, but I don't want to discuss this with someone who doesn't seem to understand the problem domain at all.
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#147I once automated myself out of a job, in my first banking internship, with AutoHotkey. I would fire up a script and then head out to lunch and be done by the time i got back, so then I went home. wish I got the hint that i might have what it takes to be a developer right then. instead I waited ~6 years climbing the rungs in finance.
Man you must have been lucky. The banking interns I've met certainly aren't allowed to leave when they're work is done, that would be ridiculous!
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#148I've started programming using Autohotkey, I just wanted a script for age of empire 2 to manage where catapult can efficiency dispatch attacks. After that I made a bot that can auto fold poker hands, it worked, with AHK you can search image on the screen and get position of the matched image. After that I made a fully functional and autonomous poker bot many years later I am now a software engineer, I just wanted to…
[deleted]
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#149I had a low paid data entry job one summer at university well over a decade ago that involved a tortuous process for digitising gas mains installation information. I discovered ahk and found I was able to install it, so I began to script the repetitive entry screens spread between multiple different programs. It allowed you to write a simple GUI form to collect various data up front. There was a lot of window picking…
Its experiences like this that make me sad for people who can't code. Not full blown dev, just enough to automate the mundane.
I can't imagine being at the mercy of computer tech in areas of being the master of it.
Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey
#150I heavily use AHK to make my Windows 10 an enjoyable and keyboard focused environment. Between AHK and an hardware keyboard with full keyboard macro's, I have Windows working with my Macintosh inspired keyboard bindings. Of course on the Mac, I heavily use Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar so I am really implementing my own keyboard centric UI
> hardware keyboard with full keyboard macros Do you use one? Which? I used one, very convenient, in eighties(!) and haven't seen something comparable since. The functionality I had then that I liked was: any key could be programmed to really anything else (except the special "macro" key) -- another key or another sequence of the keys, and I regularly did some action once, recording it with just one "start recording"…
I'm not the parent, but I use the Kinesis Advantage and it supports macros. Basically you can rebind any key to any other and also bind any key to a sequence of other keys. I think you can also change the timing of each key press, but I've never used that feature.