Automated Tagging System via Auto Hotkey with an assist from CHS
Background:: Life is easy. Tagging is hard. I run a site where I would like to tag my videos. Getting volunteer help to assist you with this I feel is like asking someone to search imdb manually to find the right info and making it more apparent that their life is ending 1 minute at a time.
Goal: To automate tagging as much as possible so I take as few minutes of their lives as possible.
Intended Methods:
- Don't reinvent the wheel. Ethically hack another web site's already existing tagging system (work smart not hard):
- Use Stylish browser addon to isolate relevant tag drop downs
- These drop downs have auto complete and allow you to select tags without adding them to an input field or even submitting the form
- Copy tags from this web site and add them to your Google sheet specifically for each video. Rinse & repeat.
- Customize your own video detail page for each video using VBA (approx 1,100 html pages)
- Strip the traditional Google form of all non essentials and embed form on page (all tagging info in a spreadsheet)
What I learned: CHS could not do what I wanted when it came to automating Keyboard navigation with my limited knowledge of send keys. Primarily, I don't think I knew enough to switch between the 2 web pages using "send keys". Also CHS has great formatting presets but those triggered new clips that messed up my order for pasting "clip sets". (copying text from last to first and paste from first to last for each tagging session). These are not necessarily limitations of CHS but I just knew how to figure this out with Auto Hotkey faster then with Sendkeys. Also couldn't figure out how to trigger a stack starting from 1 and going to 4. This is why I said "with an assist from CHS" because CHS is just managing the clipboard history. AHK is doing all the automation heavy lifting.
Also I used Windows Key + q to launch CHS in Auto Hotkey and used Tab to select the clips ie tab once for clip 1 and tab twice for clip 2 and so on.
Thank you mouser for your encouragement by responding to my post. If you see any obvious things I overlooked feel free to chime in. I won't eat you. Apparently I like Lasagna :D.