{"id":52,"date":"2008-04-01T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/2008\/04\/01\/autohotkey-script-shortcuts-mouse-clicks-more\/"},"modified":"2008-04-01T09:00:10","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T13:00:10","slug":"autohotkey-script-shortcuts-mouse-clicks-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/2008\/04\/01\/autohotkey-script-shortcuts-mouse-clicks-more\/","title":{"rendered":"AutoHotkey: Script Shortcuts, Mouse Clicks, More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I downloaded a great little application that a coworker recommended: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/\">AutoHotkey<\/a>. Similar to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/software\/texter\/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php\">Texter<\/a> or other utilities that allow you to assign keyboard shortcuts to input text strings, AutoHotkey does all that and more. And, unlike Texter, it works on Vista (and XP), and I haven&#8217;t run into the same little quirks that I&#8217;ve run into with Texter in the past (scripts would go missing, keyboard shortcuts wouldn&#8217;t work).<\/p>\n<p><center><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/\"><img border=0 src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/autohotkey_logo.gif' alt='AutoHotkey' \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve only just scratched the surface of what&#8217;s possible with AutoHotkey, which allows you to do things like the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing &#8216;btw&#8217; can automatically produce &#8216;by the way.'&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As just one example of how AutoHotkey goes beyond Texter, yesterday I created a shortcut to create my signature that I use in Outlook replies to customers (by default, I don&#8217;t have my sig appear in replies since there&#8217;s no reason to include it on internal responses to colleagues) &#8212; including <strong>bolding <\/strong>some of the text, which is not possible in other scripting apps I&#8217;ve used. So now I can just type <strong>Ctrl-Shift-S<\/strong> and get the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gabe Anderson<br \/>\nDirector of Customer Support<br \/>\n<strong>Articulate<\/strong> &#8211; Empowering Rapid E-Learning<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.articulate.com\">www.articulate.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how to get started with a simple example like this:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Download &#038; install <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/\">AutoHotkey<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Save &#038; extract <a target=\"_blank\" href='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/autohotkeys.zip' title='autohotkeys.zip'>this zip file<\/a> anywhere on your computer.<\/li>\n<li>Double-click the <em>autohotkeys.ahk<\/em> file. You&#8217;ll see this green &#8220;H&#8221; icon appear in your taskbar:\n<p><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/snag-1812.png' alt='autohotkeys icon' \/><\/li>\n<li>Right-click the green &#8220;H&#8221; and select <strong>Edit This Script<\/strong> to edit the text to match your own signature (and create other text shortcuts as desired):\n<p><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/snag-1813.png' alt='Edit This Script' \/><\/li>\n<li>Save &#038; close the script file.<\/li>\n<li>Right-click the green &#8220;H&#8221; and select <strong>Reload This Script<\/strong> to load your changes (AutoHotkey will tell you if you have any syntax errors in your script):\n<p><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/snag-1814.png' alt='Reload This Script' \/><\/li>\n<li>Reply to an email and test it out by typing <strong>Ctrl-Shift-S<\/strong> (or whatever hotkeys you chose).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/docs\/\">documentation<\/a> includes lots of great examples so you can explore what else is possible, from <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/docs\/Tutorial.htm#Launch\">launching applications<\/a> to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autohotkey.com\/docs\/Tutorial.htm#Activate\">activating and manipulating windows<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Give it a shot and have fun! Remember: Less time using your mouse means more productivity. <\/p>\n<p>By the way, you can create multiple scripts, each of which can run in its own instance in your task bar, or create one script file to contain all your goodies. Then you can set each one (or your one master script file) to launch at startup (drop a shortcut in your Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup folder &#8212; path will vary whether you&#8217;re on XP or Vista).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I downloaded a great little application that a coworker recommended: AutoHotkey. Similar to Texter or other utilities that allow you to assign keyboard shortcuts to input text strings, AutoHotkey does all that and more. And, unlike Texter, it works on Vista (and XP), and I haven&#8217;t run into the same little quirks that I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,21,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripts","category-utilities","category-vista","category-windows","category-xp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}