Macro Recording and Automating Windows with Macro Scheduler – Tips & News
Thanks to Zazzle we can now offer MJT Net Logo T-Shirts and merchandise.
Just what every Macro Scheduler user always wanted! View the products at the Zazzle store here. Oh, and by the way – Zazzle are currently offering an “Inauguration Weekend Sale!” which ends today. So act quickly if you want a good deal.
Macro Scheduler 11.1.01 Update is now available with the following fixes:
– Fixed: Window Open Trigger not working properly when visible windows only is UNCHECKED
– Fixed: Tray icon still not single clicking in Windows 7
– Fixed: Macro recorder “Run this application first” option not working
– Fixed: When entering hotkey via “Type a hotkey” box in macro properties you are not asked if you want to save changes
Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales
I’m no fish expert, so it meant nothing to me when I saw the pretty looking fish on the Windows 7 beta wallpaper. Then I saw this CNET report. Turns out it’s a Siamese fighting fish also known as a Betta fish, pronounced “beta”. Presumably, therefore, it won’t be the default wallpaper in the final release?
Update: I hadn’t noticed – there are also 7 bubbles!
A while back I got this comment in an email:
“I loved Macro Scheduler. Unfortunately, I’m now working exclusively on Mac and Linux boxes. I have kept a copy of Macro Scheduler, just in case I ever return to Windows, and have recommended it to many friends (2 of which have purchased copies). After 2 years without Windows, I have to say that I don’t miss Windows, but I do miss Macro Scheduler.”
Despite the fact that we’ve lost a customer to Linux, I think that’s quite an endorsement. Linux has always catered to the sysadmin with its rich command line interface, and all Linux tools, utilities and system apps provide a command line processor. Linux also comes with a number of built-in scripting languages and an advanced scheduler called Cron. So Linux is made for being automated. Windows, on the other hand, was designed almost exclusively for human users and is purely graphical. Therefore, tools like Macro Scheduler are required to automate Windows applications. Nice to hear how important Macro Scheduler was to this sysadmin when he had to put up with Windows 🙂
Tim Sneath has a handy post entitled “The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets“. If you’re testing out Windows 7 you should find it useful.
Macro Scheduler 11.1 Update is now available with the following fixes:
– Fixed: Text Capture functions (GetWindowTextEx, WaitScreenText, GetTextInRect, GetTextAtPoint) could
cause clipboard function to stop working in source application
– Fixed: Standalone Editor not prompting to save on exit after compile options changed and not saved
– Fixed: Inline Function selector not adding chevron to GetWindowList
– Fixed: Updating dialog in editor from popup menu could leave blank space at start of first line of dialog block
– Fixed: Find Next in Editor will now follow search direction as set in Find dialog
– Fixed: Tab characters causing text loss in watch list
– Change: Tray icon action changed to single click for Windows 7
Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales
Here’s a handy list of keyboard shortcuts in Windows Vista. No doubt valid for Windows 7 too.
Did you know you could focus the taskbar with Windows Key + T:
Press LWinKey Send>t Release LWinKey
I didn’t!
I have just added an RSS feed for the Podcasts to the Podcast and Testimonial page. You can subscribe here:
http://www.mjtnet.com/Macro_Scheduler_Customer_Podcasts.xml
Office 2007 does something weird to its window titles. What you see in the window title is not the real internal window title. It’s back to front. E.g. Excel says something like “filename.xls – Microsoft Excel” when in fact the correct title is “Microsoft Excel – filename.xls” just as it always has been. If you look at the task bar icon you’ll see it the right way around. That is what you need to use in your SetFocus/WaitWindowOpen commands etc.
Probably the biggest change in Macro Scheduler 11, though not visual, was Unicode support. For Macro Scheduler to support Unicode in scripts it has to save the script files with Unicode encoding rather than ANSI encoding. And if you open a Unicode file up in an ANSI editor it’s going to look garbled. Since older versions of Macro Scheduler were ANSI only and didn’t know anything about Unicode, if you open a v11 script up in v10 (or earlier) that script is going to look wrong.
The v11 release notes have a big warning about this. Nothing is damaged permanently and it doesn’t have any effect on upgrading. It’s only an issue if you edit or create a script in v11 and then, for whatever reason, try to open it in an earlier version. So if, for example, you’re running v11 and you have another PC running v10 and you create a script on your PC and wish to open it on the PC running v10 it’s going to look messed up.
One solution of course is to upgrade that copy of v10 to v11. But there is another solution. You can tell v11 to save the script with ANSI encoding. From the editor use File/Save As and then in the file type box select “ANSI Script Files”. Alternatively just open the script file up in Notepad and save it again, selecting ANSI in the Encoding box. This of course assumes that you don’t actually NEED Unicode. If you have Unicode characters in your script which you need to use, then clearly saving as ANSI will destroy them. In which case you do need to upgrade that v10 installation to v11.