Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

Edit: 23 March 2011. In Version 12 it is possible to make a dialog stay on top simply by setting the dialog’s FormStyle property to fsStayOnTop. The method outlined in this post is not necessary for v12 dialogs but will remain as it can be used for older versions and the same approach can be used for windows belonging to other processes.

A question that comes up every now and then is how to make a custom dialog stay “on top” of other windows even when it loses the focus. There is a way to do this by calling the Windows API function SetWindowPos. There are examples in the forums but for convenience here’s a version of one:

SRT>StayOnTop
  Let>HWND_TOPMOST=-1
  Let>HWND_NOTOPMOST=-2
  Let>SWP_NOSIZE=1
  Let>SWP_NOMOVE=2
  Let>SWP_NOACTIVATE=16
  Let>SWP_SHOWWINDOW=64
  Let>WindowHandle=%StayOnTop_var_1%
  Let>Flags={%SWP_NOACTIVATE% Or %SWP_SHOWWINDOW% Or %SWP_NOMOVE% Or %SWP_NOSIZE%}
  LibFunc>User32,SetWindowPos,swpr,%WindowHandle%,HWND_TOPMOST,0,0,0,0,Flags
END>StayOnTop

This subroutine takes a window handle and modifies the properties of that window to make it stay above other windows.

For example, if we had just opened Notepad and wanted to force it to stay on top we could do:

GetWindowHandle>Untitled - Notepad,hwndNotepad
GoSub>StayOnTop,hwndNotepad

Or to get the handle of the active window use GetActiveWindow with WIN_USEHANDLE set to 1.

To set one of your own custom dialogs to stay on top use:

GoSub>StayOnTop,DialogName.Handle

Don’t forget that we are at the mercy of Windows here (and possibly the developers of the app we’re trying to force to the top). It’s a bit rude to have a window floating around on top of other windows. And consider what would happen if another window is opened which is also set to stay on top in the same way? You can’t have two windows on top. So multiple “stay on top” windows will still overlap each other depending on which one has the focus. In short you can’t really guarantee that a window will always be on top.

Macro Scheduler has a number of scheduling features to allow you to specify when a macro should fire. One of these mechanisms is called a Trigger. There are several trigger types:

• Window Event
• File Event
• Folder Event
• Custom Event

A Window Event can be set to fire when a specified window appears or disappears. Similarly file events can be set to fire the macro when the specified file exists or ceases to exist. Folder events offer much the same (a folder exists or ceases to exist) but also a little more. A Folder event can also be configured which will fire the macro when a new file appears in the folder, or a file is removed from the folder.

New File Triggers

With a “New File in Folder” trigger the macro will fire whenever a new file appears in the folder, regardless of what that file is called. This can be very useful and is often used to detect incoming files for further processing. In a situation like this we would need to detect that a new file has appeared and then do something with it. Using the New File in Folder trigger will cause the macro to run, but then we need the macro to determine what that file is called. We can do that with a VBScript function which returns the newest file in a folder:

VBSTART
Function NewestFile(Folder)
Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder(Folder)
dPrevDate = "0"
For Each oFile In oFolder.Files
  If DateDiff("s", dPrevDate, oFile.DateLastModified) > 0 Then
    sNewestFile = oFile.Path
    dPrevDate = oFile.DateLastModified
  End If
Next
NewestFile = sNewestFile
End Function
VBEND

We can then call it like this:

VBEval>NewestFile("c:\downloads"),filename

This will return in filename the path of the newest file in the given folder. So if our macro is fired by a new file appearing in a folder it can then run this code to get that file’s path and do something with it.

Custom Triggers

Custom triggers allow you to create any kind of trigger you can think of by executing Macro Scheduler code. Maybe you want to monitor the contents of a text file or an INI file entry, a registry entry or the size of a specific file. If you can code the check in Macro Scheduler you can create a trigger out of it.

Custom triggers work by linking to a script (.scp) file which contain two subroutines. One subroutine is called Trigger and the other Reset. Initially the Trigger subroutine is called repeatedly until it sets MACRO_RESULT to TRUE. Thereupon Macro Scheduler calls the Reset routine instead until it too sets MACRO_RESULT to TRUE and the cycle then continues.

By way of an example lets say we want to trigger a macro based on the value of an INI file entry. Let’s say our INI file looks like this:

[MyStuff]
Color=red

Let’s say we want to trigger a macro to run when the Color entry in the INI file gets set to “blue”. Here’s our trigger script:

SRT>Trigger
  ReadIniFile>d:\files\myini.ini,MyStuff,Color,gColor
  If>gColor=blue
    Let>MACRO_RESULT=TRUE
  Endif
END>Trigger

SRT>Reset
  ReadIniFile>d:\files\myini.ini,MyStuff,Color,gColor
  If>gColor<>blue
    Let>MACRO_RESULT=TRUE
  Endif
END>Reset

So here the Trigger routine which is executed continually by the scheduler will return TRUE only if Color in the INI file becomes equal to “blue”. Thereupon the Reset routine will be executed which will reset the trigger when Color is no longer “blue”. After that the Trigger routine is executed again.

Since Trigger routines are run frequently on a very tight interval they should be kept as small as possible and should not be long running. Don’t make Trigger scripts that perform too much complicated processing or include delays as this could cause resource issues. Sometimes, for more complicated “triggers” or monitoring scripts you may be better off creating a looping macro or repeating macro. E.g. if you wanted to poll a POP3 server for an email message containing specific content this is a more time consuming process subject to network delays so would probably not be a good candidate for a Custom Trigger. Instead create a macro which checks the email every few minutes, or one that loops continuously.

When sending keystrokes to other applications remember that Macro Scheduler works much faster than a human being can type. Many applications do form field verification or background processing on the fly as the text is received. And most applications were designed on the assumption that a human being would be operating them. It may not have occurred to the developers that a robot might try to send a stream of text to the UI at the rate of 5000 characters a second!

With some applications if you try to send too many characters at once you may find that some of those characters fail to show up, or the string is truncated.

The solution should be obvious by now. That is to slow down the key send rate. You can do this easily by setting the SK_DELAY parameter which introduces a specified millisecond delay between each character.

Let>SK_DELAY=20
Send>long_string

Of course you could break the long string down into smaller chunks and insert a delay between them:

Send>part_1
Wait>0.3
Send>part_2
Wait>0.2
Send>part_3

But SK_DELAY is simpler and easier if you can’t control the length of the data easily.

A related issue I see every now and then is when “tabbing” from one field to another on a form. Pressing the tab key moves the focus to the next field, so we use this while sending data into a form. Sometimes we’ll encounter an application which needs a bit of time after a field has been focused before it can accept data, or the other way around. So sending Tab immediately after/before sending the data with no delay fails to work. Adding in a small delay between sending the data and the Tab solves it:

Send>field_data
Wait>0.3
Press Tab

Wait>0.3
Send>next_field
Wait>0.3
Press Tab

etc

Similarly when we need to tab through lots of fields at once without sending data we may try to save ourselves coding time by writing:

Press Tab * 10

But if the app needs time to react between each tab we may have to split that out into separate tabs with delays between them or replace with a repeat/until loop:

Let>tabs=0
Repeat>tabs
  Press Tab
  Wait>0.2
  Let>tabs=tabs+1
Until>tabs=10

As I’ve said many times before the most common causes of things not working as expected are either timing or focus. Macros run way faster than a human can type which is often beneficial but if things aren’t quite right start off by slowing the macro down a bit. You can always speed it up later!