We made a fun little Christmas game for you all:
Help Santa get the presents down the chimney, but watch out for the snowmen and coal which freeze the chimney or set the presents on fire. Of course true to form Macro Scheduler saves you time, so in the game if you catch an MJT Gearhead you get extra time!
Click on the image above or here to play. Don’t forget to share your score!
Enjoy, and Happy Christmas!
If you haven’t seen our December Newsletter you might not know that this December we’re giving away copies of Macro Scheduler Lite with all new purchases of Macro Scheduler Std, Pro and Enterprise.
If you don’t receive our newsletter you can sign up here. Every month we send an email with tips, update announcements, and, sometimes, special offers. Every subscriber also gets a 10% discount coupon and a free copy of QuickButtons. Plus you’ll be the first to get the news.
Don’t forget that this festive season there is also the chance to win an Amazon Kindle Fire.
We’re kicking off the festive season with a great Facebook contest. The winner will receive a fantastic new Amazon Kindle Fire Android Tablet*.
All you have to do is tell us how you use, or intend to use, Macro Scheduler and how you benefit, or hope to benefit, from it.
Everyone can vote on the entries, so you can get your friends to vote for you or vote for your favourite story.
Entries close on 15th Jan and voting will run until 29th February when the winner will be announced.
To enter and view rules/instructions go here.
*If you are outside the USA and the Kindle Fire is not available where you live we will send you Amazon vouchers of equivalent value.
In the Macro Scheduler 13 releases notes we declared a known issue with the text capture functions when used to capture from a window or rectangular screen area if the underlying window belonged to a 64 bit process. And we promised to release a fix as soon as it was made available to us.
Well I’m pleased to say it is now here. v13.0.03 includes the fixed text capture libraries which address this issue.
Life is never simple though is it!? We’ve had to change the Text Capture Wizard very slightly. The new libraries don’t seem to like the way we used the mouse to drag the cross hairs to the target point for X,Y position capture. It seems that text capture can be affected by having a mouse button held down! I’ve reported this to the developers of the library component but rather than wait any longer we’ve made a simple change to the way the text capture wizard works. For point capture, instead of dragging the cursor to the point you want to capture from you now need to move the mouse while holding the Shift key down until you’ve captured the text you want (or move the mouse to the text you want, then hold Shift down until it shows in the wizard, then release Shift).
Workarounds seem to be the order of the day. Macro Scheduler 13 was built with the newest version of Delphi – Delphi XE2. Shortly after Macro Scheduler 13 was released some people noticed that if you open the help file from the main Macro Scheduler window, then leave help open, go into the Editor and then try and access the help or invoke help from the editor, the help window would become unresponsive.
This issue didn’t occur in v12 and we soon realised it is a bug introduced in Delphi XE2. We’ve reported it to Embarcadero and they are now aware of it. Apparently it is a regression to a bug that existed in an earlier version.
So the good news is that Embarcadero know about it. Trouble is they don’t release bug fixes quite as quickly as we do. So rather than wait we’ve completely re-written the way the help is displayed and handled so as not to use the Delphi libraries. So in this latest build the help system now works correctly!
V13.0.03 also fixes a few other small issues and you’ll find a complete list of changes here.
Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales
Hopefully by now you’ve had a chance to check out the new code wizards in Macro Scheduler 13. I know some of you are already using them and we’ve had some fantastic feedback about how much they will simplify and speed up code creation.
I forgot to mention in my newsletter that we’d like to add more wizards. But for this we need your feedback and suggestions. What kinds of wizards would you like? Think about what could be simplified and how it might be done. If you have some wizard ideas please let me know. Contact us here.
Any new wizards to v13 will be included in a point release, which of course will be free to those with a v13 license.
I am pleased to announce that Macro Scheduler 13 is now Shipping!
Here’s a quick round up of some of the exciting changes and new features in v13.
Easy to use Code Wizards
We’ve added new code wizards for simplifying image recognition, sending key strokes, performing mouse actions, and screen text capture. These code wizards are not just aimed at newcomers, but will also assist the most experienced developer in generating code more quickly. With these code wizards many tasks can be automated more quickly with less coding required.
To view these wizards in action please see the video demos listed below
Scripting Enhancements
Now you can locate UI objects by classname, get their screen position and send keystrokes directly into them even when they don’t have focus. The text capture functions have been improved so that more text can be retrieved from more applications including from 64 bit processes, plus a command to scan the screen for text and return its position. We’ve added a function to read data from an Excel file even if you don’t have Excel installed; more date and time functions; the ability to create your own error handler subroutines; faster – real-time – event handlers, more event handler types and the ability to create custom event handlers. V13 also has new variable/array management functions (and better handling of arrays in the debugger).
In total there are 32 new script functions!
Run Statistics and ROI Calculator
A new tab appears in Macro Properties called “Stats”. This shows you things like when the macro was last run, how many times it has been executed, how many lines were executed, total elapsed run time, average time per line. It also provides a simple ROI calculator so that now you can easily show your boss how much time and money
your macro has saved you!
Hotkey Scope
Now you can specify whether a hot key should be active all the time or only if the macro’s group is active. This means hot keys can be shared between groups. Choose which macro should run by activating the appropriate group.
And that’s not all. For a more complete and detailed list of changes please see the version 13 Release Notes.
Downloads/Upgrades
Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales
Registered users with valid, up to date, maintenance can download version 13 from the registered user area here.
I’ve just uploaded another video preview to the Macro Scheduler Facebook page.
We’re close to releasing v13 now. So stay tuned for more news.
Don’t forget that if you buy v12 now you’ll get v13 for free when it is released. So if you are thinking of purchasing there’s no need to wait!
Video preview number 4 is now up on the Facebook page.
Preview video number 3 is up. Here: www.facebook.com/MacroScheduler.
Preview video number 2 is up. Over here: www.facebook.com/MacroScheduler.
