April 13, 2009

We can Automate Your Task

Filed under: Announcements, Automation, Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:01 pm

We don’t just sell great automation software.  We can also build your task for you.

If you don’t have the time, know-how or technical resource to automate your task yourself you might want to check out our new We Can Build It service.

We’ve been doing custom script development for years but have never actively promoted it as a separate service.  Now, with our We Can Build It service we can take a look at your process and automate it for you.

Many people reading this blog are already using and benefiting from Macro Scheduler and happily automating their tasks themselves.  If you’re one of those people you probably don’t need this service, but you may know someone else who does.  If so please pass this post on to them.  

For more information or to find out if your task is a candidate for automation click here.

April 1, 2009

WebRecorder 2.1 Update

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:47 pm

WebRecorder has been updated to version 2.1 with the following changes:

IEAuto.DLL (Runtime) Changes:

– CreateIE now ensures new IE window has focus

WebRecorder Changes:

– Support for Vista themes
– If a ClickTag element has no NAME recorder will use its ID if it has one, else will use numeric INDEX.  This helps to ensure more objects can be recorded and played back with less editing. 

Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales

Macro Scheduler 11.1.08 Update

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:01 am

Macro Scheduler 11.1.08 is now available with the following changes:

  • Added: GetTextReset – reset/initialise text capture functions
  • Fixed: Syntax highlighting: CR in CreateDir showing as CR system variable
  • Fixed: WLN_NOCRLF not included in syntax highlighting / sys var list
  • Fixed: Incorrect tab in macro properties being displayed on some data entry validation errors on save
  • Change: Hotkeys now ineffective while cursor is in type hotkey field of macro properties

Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales

March 29, 2009

MJT Net Gearhead Spotted in the New Forest

Filed under: General, Uncategorized — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:40 pm

If you were down in the woods yesterday you may have been in for a surprise. For in the New Forest, Southern England, you might have seen 400 participants of the first Questars Adventure Race of 2009, running, biking and canoeing.

MJT Net Adventure Race Team

Three of those people were sponsored by MJT Net and wearing our lovely new MJT Net Gearhead T-Shirts. We were not let down – the team came in 8th place in the Novice Mixed category. An excellent result for their first ever adventure race.

MJT Net Adventure Race Team

Congratulations to Angela Fulcher, Dan Spry and Tom Lloyd-Edwards, and thanks for wearing the T-shirts!

March 27, 2009

Macro Scheduler 11.1.07 Update Released

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:03 am

Macro Scheduler 11.1.07 is now available with the following changes:

  • Fixed: Separate failing to work if delimiter a variable in % symbols
  • Fixed: WebRecorder/VBScript web automation issues with IE8+Vista+UAC
  • Fixed: Added ‘ (apostrophe), Rem and Remark as valid comment tokens to syntax highlighter in editor
  • Fixed: Syntax parser highlighting recognised command names inside other commands
  • Fixed: Empty (“”) variable names can no longer be created. Any empty names ignored.
  • Fixed: SOWriteLn not adding line break
  • Added: Code folding support for For..Next, While..Wend, Do..Loop in VBScript

As you can see this release addresses the IE8+Vista+UAC issue discussed in my last post.

Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales

March 25, 2009

IE8, Vista, UAC and WebRecorder/VBScript Web Macros

Filed under: General, Vista — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:50 am

I just upgraded to IE8 on a new Vista desktop with UAC enabled out of the box. Now, WebRecorder macros and VBScript macros which automate Internet Explorer fail to work unless Macro Scheduler is run as Admin. IE’s Protected Mode is turned off, and “Allow scripting of Internet Explorer webbrowser control” is enabled. But if you try to run a WebRecorder macro without elevating Macro Scheduler to run as admin you will see a delay followed by:

Error Calling DLL – Possible wrong number or type of parameters.

If you try and run a VBScript macro which creates an Internet Explorer instance using CreateObject you will get the following error after a delay:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error :429

ActiveX component can’t create object: ‘InternetExplorer.Application’

This problem did not occur with IE6 or IE7.

If you run Macro Scheduler as administrator, or disable UAC everything works fine. To run Macro Scheduler as admin right click on the Macro Scheduler icon and select “Run as administrator”.

I have emailed the IE team at Microsoft to find out if there is any better solution. I will let you know what they say.

Update: No news from Microsoft but after lots of experimentation we discovered some very surprising things which don’t really make any sense, but have enabled us to make some changes in order to solve the problem. The next Macro Scheduler update will therefore have the above issues fixed.

March 23, 2009

Macro Scheduler Portable Installer Updated

Filed under: Uncategorized — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:01 pm

I’ve improved the Macro Scheduler Portable installer so that it now prompts for the drive letter you want to install on rather than default to Program Files which doesn’t make much sense for a portable install. It also grabs your license code from your full install so that you don’t need to enter it manually the first time you run the portable copy.

I’ve added the Macro Scheduler Portable Installer download to the plugins page.

It’s time to bring down IE6!

Filed under: General, Web/Tech — Marcus Tettmar @ 12:12 pm

Bring Down IE6

Some of you may remember that we had some issues with Internet Explorer 6 support when we released our new web site. I made some negative comments about IE6. And I was being polite. Unfortunately IE6 is still in use in millions of companies and, as I mentioned in that last post, some 35% of our web traffic is delivered by people using IE6. If it were up to me I’d banish it to web browser hell.

So I’m all for a new campaign from .Net magazine: Bring Down IE6.

If you have the power to do so, upgrade now, or try out Firefox or Google Chrome . If you’re working for a company that locks down their PCs and forces you to use IE6, get vocal – educate your colleagues and IT department. Petition them to lift you out of the dark ages! 🙂

Check out the site to see how you can get involved.

March 19, 2009

Create a Portable Macro Scheduler Install (Beta)

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:57 pm

usbthumblA long time ago in a land far away called Windows 95 it was normal to store application settings and data in the program’s folder. Then Microsoft came out with all kinds of guidelines and the “correct” procedure was to use the registry. With a locked down standard user account, and with a default Vista install, an app can’t store data in its own folder anyway. Now, everyone wants their apps to be portable. And one way to do that is to store the settings and data in the program’s folder. Exactly what we did 10 or so years ago. So we’ve come full circle. Or rather, we now need to support both methods.

Enter the “Macro Scheduler Portable Install Creator”.

I’ve put together a little tool which will create a portable Macro Scheduler Std install for you which will run independently, keep its settings and macro files in its own folder and not leave any settings on the host PC. It will run without requiring administrative credentials. It can be used to put a self-contained Macro Scheduler install on a USB drive, for example, which will run on any Windows PC.

Download the beta from:
http://www.mjtnet.com/software/msched_portable_creator.exe

Requirements/Notes:

* The creator requires Macro Scheduler 11 to be installed. It will copy some files from the Macro Scheduler 11 installation to the portable folder. Once created your portable install will run anywhere.

* The wizard does not copy any of your script files. It creates a fresh, empty installation. If required you can import macros afterwards using File/Import Macros. In a portable install all macro files are stored in the portable folder. You can create macro groups but the group path cannot be changed (otherwise it would no longer be portable).

* A standard (not pro) installation is created. Macros can only be compiled from a full install of Macro Scheduler Pro.

March 12, 2009

IsNumeric: More fun with Easy Patterns

Filed under: Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 5:14 pm

VBScript has a function called IsNumeric, but as discussed in this forum post VBScript numbers can contain the letter ‘E’ (and it would seem ‘D’ too). These are valid numbers as far as VBScript is concerned but in the real world we usually don’t care for them. Numbers may also be floats. So in the forum post we came up with the following VBScript functions for IsNumber and IsInteger:

VBSTART
Function IsNumber(var)
  IsNumber = (LCase(var) = UCase(var)) and isNumeric(var)
End Function

Function IsInteger(var)
  IsInteger = IsNumber(var) and (InStr(var,".") = 0)
End Function
VBEND

Now we have Easy Patterns I thought I’d show you another neat way to validate that a string is numeric:

//IsNumeric?
Let>data=154.3
RegEx>[lineStart][oneOrMore number or "."][lineEnd],data,1,matches,num_matches,0
If>num_matches>0
  //string IS numeric
Endif

If you just want to check the string is integer, change it to:

//IsInteger?
Let>data=154
RegEx>[lineStart][oneOrMore number][lineEnd],data,1,matches,num_matches,0
If>num_matches>0
  //string IS integer
Endif

If we want to see if a string merely contains a number we can do:

//Contains a number?
Let>data=fred 224 sally 4
RegEx>[oneOrMore number],data,1,matches,num_matches,0
If>num_matches>0
  //string CONTAINS number
Endif
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