AutoHotKey (AHK) is a god-send for anyone looking to make their computing faster and easier. Downloading AutoHotKey and learning the basics, and eventually, more advanced features has opened up an amazing world of computer expediency.
What originally drew me into AutoHotKey’s seductive web was how amazingly easy it was to speed up basic computer tasks. I have programmed in more languages than I care to count, so you may be skeptical aof my use of the phrase “amazingly easy.” However, I believe someone with no programming experience could easily do some basic AHK tasks to speed up their interactions with their computer.
Simple AHK Use:
For example, there is a set of websites that I go to frequently and I don’t want to have to open up a new browser window or tab, click the address box, and then type the a website address in to get to my desired website – thats just too slow! Instead, I can press a 2 or 3 key combination and all of the above is done for me. The following line opens a new browser tab and goes to ESPN’s main NBA page when I press Control + Alt + B: “^!b::Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index“ To someone new that might look confusing and fancy, but really there are 3 simple parts to it:
“^!b” – The keys to press. “^” represents the Control key. “!” represents the Alt key. “#” and “+” can be used for the Win and Shift key respectively. “b” represents the B key. “::” separates the the keys from the command(s). “Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index” is the command that opens up a new web browser or tab and takes me to ESPN’s NBA page.
If you’ve downloaded AutoHotKey and AutoHotKey.ahk is running (a little green and white H in the bottom right tray bar), you can right click on the green and white H, select “edit,” and add the line I quoted above. Then save the file and right click on the H again and select “reload.” Now when you press Control + Alt + B ESPN’s NBA website will open up. You can easily chang ethe “b” to a different key and the website to any website, folder, file, or program path.
With each Hot Key combination, it may only save you 5-10 seconds each time you use it, but over time that really adds up – especially when you combine it with multiple time-saving scripting actions.
Simple+ Use:
You can do a lot more with AHK than just quickly running or opening something by just adding a few more tools to your arsenal. You can have more than one command attached to a quick key set simply by going to the next line after the “::” and then ending the command set with “return” on the line after the last line of commands. There are some sets of files/folders/programs/etc that I want to open all at once. I can set that up to happen by just pressing a few keys. For example:
^!b::
Run www.nba.com
Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index
Run C:\somedoc.doc
Run C:\somexls.xls
Run C:\somefolder
return
The previous code will open both the websites, the folder and both files when Control + Alt + B are pressed.
There are other useful commands that you can likely understand and use easily. For example, “Send blahblah” sends “blahblah” as if you typed it on a keyboard. This is useful for sending long usernames or passwords (I recommend against really important passwords).
You can also use MouseMove X, Y and Click which are relatively self-explanatory.
Another easy tool is Auto-Replace: “::btw::by the way” will automatically replace “btw” with “by the way” (you need to type space, comma, or other ending characters after btw to activate).
If you still want to learn more, I’ll post about some useful easy tools later. Also, I recommend the AHK Forums and the help file that comes with AHK is really useful.
