SOLVED: Instant Notes - move mouse to top left corner to pop up a notepad

[tannim]

Hey guys.  My first time here.

Yes, yet another notepad thing, they're everywhere and way over done, but I liked this idea enough to type it out anyway.

An instant notepad/text box that pops up when you move your mouse cursor to locations 0,0(could add 1,0 0,1 and 1,1 I suppose).  The notepad would load a default note file, take system focus, and position the cursor at the end of the file on a new blank line.  You type in what you want, then move your cursor away.  It would then save the file, close the notepad/text box, and return focus to the program it took focus from.

I chose 0,0 because the mouse is almost never at that spot without purposefully going there.  It is very easy to get to with almost no chance of missing it as well.  Even if you do accidentally get there, simply move the mouse away to go back to work.

A user customizable hotkey would allow you to lock the notepad/text box open for copy and paste operations with the mouse.

The goal is not to make a notepad replacement, just to make an instant and effortless no click required way to type out thoughts, paste copied text, and generally get back to work as soon as possible.

I tried to make something in autohotkey to do this but I never managed anything usable.  

[mouser]

Just a quick comment -- as someone who is pretty visual and mouse-loving, i still think you might be better off with a solution that used a hotkey to bring up notebox to type into, and hotkey to make it go away.

Whether thats something like Skwire's Anuran, or a notetaking plugin for my Find and Run Robot program, i just think that would be more comfortable and faster than moving mouse somewhere.

[AndyM]

Second that. 

You are still going to have to take your hand off the mouse in order to type your note.  So leave the mouse where it was, hit your hotkey, which starts your script.  The script remembers which window was active when it was started, so after typing when you exit your note you are easily returned to your original active window just before the script ends.

I tried to make something in autohotkey to do this but I never managed anything usable.

Did you get stuck on the mouse activation (which we are suggesting you discard)?  Did you get something useable in the way of opening, editing, and saving your note file?  If so, try starting (and perhaps exiting) that with a hotkey, and look into the autohotkey ActiveWindow commands.

[cranioscopical]

@tannim

You might also take a look at Quicknote which fulfills at least some of your requirements, if not all.

[Paul Keith]

(Just being a devil's advocate)

The con of hotkeys though is the high risk of program conflict.

Imagine having a program maximized and the hotkey opens up the notepad instead.

I do use a minimized to tray Akelpad for this though. Love auto saving only when mouse loses focus on the window (so all I do is alt+tab or minimize the window and it saves) Too bad there's no plugin for auto-opening a new tab off of clicking the tray icon.

[skwire]

@tannim, if you can't find something you like from the suggestions, I'll write this for you.  Based on your description and my first thoughts, it's a pretty easy Coding Snack to write.  Yeah, cranio, mouser et al, famous last words.

[joiwind]

@ tannim - this MAY be something like what you're looking for : mfnotepad

[AndyM]

or Flashnote

http://softvoile.com/flashnote/

[rjbull]

Either NotesHolder or QuotePad, which is a rebranded version of it.  Not quite your mouse target, but you can set it so that you "bump" a line at the edge of the screen to pop it up, or use a hotkey.  If you go this route, it may help to know that QuotePad is free and NotesHolder has both free and payware versions.  Overkeen AV scanners tend to mark the payware version as a false positive, but not the free version, and AFAIC the payware version doesn't have a huge extra functionality anyway.

[tannim]

@tannim

You might also take a look at Quicknote which fulfills at least some of your requirements, if not all.

-cranioscopical (March 24, 2011, 11:07 AM)

Quicknotes is very close to what I want, indeed.  It has the corner mouse over popup and instant focus.  The only thing it doesn't have, which I can probably live without, is that it doesn't instantly hide again when I move my mouse away.  I can press escape or click outside the window so I think it will work.  Thank you : )  Maybe I can request that feature on the author's site.

As to those suggesting I do not want to use a mouse to open the notes and instead should use hotkeys, I'd prefer not to as I'd have to find the key combination to hit. That is about the same effort as to move the mouse down to the task bar and click notepad.  Hotkeys are great, but not for what I wanted.  Thank you for reading anyway.

[skwire]

@tannim:  Do you mind if I mark this thread as solved?

[tannim]

You can mark it solved, thanks.

[cranioscopical]

The only thing it doesn't have, which I can probably live without, is that it doesn't instantly hide again when I move my mouse away.

-tannim (March 24, 2011, 05:07 PM)

It does for me. Perhaps dig into the options a bit?

I haven't used it for a while so can't tell you where off-hand.

There's some quite detailed help (a lot of it video) on the web site. http://www.quicknote.de/help/

Anyway, glad it's useful…

[PhilB66]

@tannim

You need to activate the 'Sleep Mode'.

[tannim]

Sleepmode works fine and is turned on.  What I meant was in relation to my original post.  if the mouse leaves that hot spot on the screen it would autohide(or sleep in this instance).  Yes, once the window loses focus it will hide, which is ok, but I was after incredible laziness of not even having to do that much to get it out of the way.

The idea is/was instant in instant out with just moving the mouse, no clicking other than typing or quick pasting something.  It works and is only a minor thing as it is.  other than that one incredibly lazy feature it does everything else I wanted : )