Question Is there software that makes shortcuts out of selections of the screen (NOT AHK!)

[Duke Eastwood]

I swear I remember there being a program that would allow you to drag a box around part of your screen and then bind it to a keyboard shortcut, thus making hitting that key the equivalent to clicking the mouse on that piece of the screen... I want this for my editing program to make shortcuts out of things that the program will not allow shortcuts to be made out of.....

I remember software like this existing, but what is it? Any search on Google shows me "AutoHotKey" over and over and over... it's NOT autohotkey I want! I'm going insane with how much that pops up as a solution when it's not -- I'm not looking for a way to type three letters and it will fill an email I write 50 times a day because I'm a human spam bot.... I just want to map a key to a section of my GUI and I know I've seen it done before!

 

[Math Geek]

the only thing i ever did like this was using macros in MS office programs. but i know many many people have such things in photoshop and other programs so it should be possible. can't say i have ever seen such a program, though i will admit i never looked for one. perhaps a new search you can work with would be making a macro in the program or in general in the gui that can be applied to the program you are using.

that's about the only thing i can think of that might be the answer.

 

[Ralston18]

The process being:

1) You create a box around some area of the GUI screen as if you were doing a screen capture (i.e. "Print Screen")

2) After that box is established you go and do other things. Maybe to other screens where the box is no longer viewable.

3) Then, when required, hitting a key (a function key perhaps) that has the end affect of clicking the mouse in the box area.

What is supposed to be the end result of that click/action?

Not sure (full disclosure) that I fully understand the requirements but depending on details Move Mouse may be a possibility.

https://www.filehorse.com/download-move-mouse/

or Snip & Sketch

https://www.lifewire.com/snip-and-sketch-windows-10-4774799

and making use of

https://ugetfix.com/ask/snip-sketch-how-to-save-screenshots-to-specified-location/

= = = =

If neither utility is applicable or otherwise not viable then take a few screen shots of your GUI to show the desired sequence of actions and expected results.

You can post the screenshots here using imgur (www.imgur.com)

In agreement with @Math Geek

Very likely you end up needing some code or macro running in the background. Python or Powershell perhaps.

 

[Grobe]

I swear I remember there being a program that would allow you to drag a box around part of your screen and then bind it to a keyboard shortcut, thus making hitting that key the equivalent to clicking the mouse on that piece of the screen..

Can I ask why you dismiss Autohotkey? I've used that piece of scripting tool a lot (at least before I went full time Linux user).

What you describe here is somehow unclear (the mouse cannot click on an area, but a point) - but in my view, ahk is THE tool for that job.

If you cange your mind, here is some starter videos:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOq1ay2hcEY

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gO-3EO4CV8


https://www.youtube.com/c/JoeGlines-Automator/featured

 

[USAFRet]

it's NOT autohotkey I want!

Specifically, why not?

 

[Duke Eastwood]

Can I ask why you dismiss Autohotkey? I've used that piece of scripting tool a lot (at least before I went full time Linux user).

What you describe here is somehow unclear (the mouse cannot click on an area, but a point) - but in my view, ahk is THE tool for that job.

If you cange your mind, here is some starter videos:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOq1ay2hcEY

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gO-3EO4CV8


https://www.youtube.com/c/JoeGlines-Automator/featured

Since I posted this I tried so many different script and macro softwares and they are all trash for what I'm trying to accomplish; I broke down and bought some hardware that adds additional controls to editing software. Even the free software I was able to find that is supposed to bind a shortcut to a point couldn't do it ... the keyboard I have is supposed to have software that allows extra (G) keys to be assigned as macros... doesn't work at all. So I'll have to see if the controllers I bought work. I'll watch this videos but I swear AHK would not help me... I literally need knobs I can turn..but was trying to see if I could bing shortcuts to funtions that the program didn't allow in it's keyboard shortcut customization

 

[Deleted member 14196]

It depends on the software you are trying to automate. These scripting tools may not work with it.

the usually support win32 apps. Not newer types written in managed languages like WFP apps and controls

you may have to look into UIAutomation. But UIAutomation Is not easy to learn and it’s slow and it’s still may not work with your application

 

[Grobe]

Sidenote: (just in cas this is missed, because Autohotkey have a lot of features not discussed in the videos):

There is a function called Imagesearch in Autohotkey. This is very usable if the "area" OP talks about can appear on different locations. I suspect this is the actual problem here.

Example: At my work, I have a web based software. The login routine is terrible cumbersome. One have to open a web reader (I use Chrome), then navigate to a login site, insert username/psw , then wait for another site to appear.
This new site have an icon I have to press to activate the app to use. But the developer of this site have made it so that the icon may appear on a slightly different screen location each time I enter this page. Therefore using a simple click-on-fixed-location-every-time based scrip will not work.

So I made a ahk script that use ImageSearch function in order to locate the position of the icon, then the next line make a mouse click that is slightly offset to the position found (so that it aims to the center of the icon).

That is the short version of the story. But of course there is more:

Spoiler: kind of detailed description

such as the script having to wait until a certain pixel point get a certain color (don't want the script to click on a spot before the web page is completely loaded) - and that I've made a readily used function to call when sending mouse click so that the cursor always resets to original position after it's finished.
Also, in many cases the automated mouse clicking is just too fast for a web page or a RDP window to catch, so one have to ensure the icon under the mouse pointer is ready to receive a mouse click - I've solved that by monitoring some particular pixels at the edge of the icon/button in question - so at this point the script never miss a button because the mouse pointer always hover over until the edge shifts color.

I'm more than happy to share some of the functions I made, but it require you to have basic understanding on how the script works - so have a look at the videos I linked to and also have a read in the ahk help manual to get to known what it is capable of.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I would use AutoIt with the webdriver udf for web automation. Searching images is absolutely the worst way to find things reliably

With webdriver you can completely automate chrome or chromium based. And you can make it robust and reliable because he knows how to wait for websites

 

[Grobe]

I would use AutoIt with the webdriver udf for web automation. Searching images is absolutely the worst way to find things reliably

Well, we do in fact not know what software OP is using. From own experience I know that if using RDP apps, Autohotkey cannot gather information about GUI elements at all and therefore one have no choice than relying on pixel data.

I have no experience with AutoIt, but from own experience I know that mostly image search are pretty reliable - unless being used in a timer, that is the only thing I never got to work reliable, I guess there is a cache/bug issue.

 

[Duke Eastwood]

Even with the new hardware I got that adds controls beyond a keyboard to Premiere I still.... downloaded autohotkey... and yeah it does do what I wanted in a program... it's just a nightmare to learn how to use. It really is like a peronal project these programmers undertake to make these programs as UN user friendly as possible.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Even with the new hardware I got that adds controls beyond a keyboard to Premiere I still.... downloaded autohotkey... and yeah it does do what I wanted in a program... it's just a nightmare to learn how to use. It really is like a peronal project these programmers undertake to make these programs as UN user friendly as possible.

What are you talking about? Any scripting language or any programming language has a learning curve associated to it. It’s actually very easy to use and learn.

Go learn assembler and then tell me how hard AHK is. The fact that someone with no programming experience was able to achieve what he wanted tells me that it’s very easy to use and learn

 

[Duke Eastwood]

What are you talking about? Any scripting language or any programming language has a learning curve associated to it. It’s actually very easy to use and learn.

Go learn assembler and then tell me how hard AHK is. The fact that someone with no programming experience was able to achieve what he wanted tells me that it’s very easy to use and learn

No it is hard to use... I didn't go into the part where literally the help topics in the program tell you the wrong information and the website tutorials tells you something completely different.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I would be interested to know that though if you would share it. Personally I like AutoIt much better it is very simple like Visual Basic six simple. In fact the two were once one and the guys who started AHK stole auto IT software and published it. So you can always look the other tools that are easier to use in the documentation for autoIT is awesome. No bs in there. The help file has all kinds of working samples in it for every topic I suggest you ditch ahk and go with auto IT If you have any other scripting needs plus there are tons of Scripts already written by users called User defined functions or UDF for short