Do you use ac'tivAid? Which extensions?

[ayryq]

I'm been playing with ac'tivAid, from (http://www.heise.de/ct/activaid/default_en.shtml), which is a set of very useful ahk scripts. I'm curious if others use this set (it's hardly been mentioned on this forum) and if so, what extensions you find useful.
I currently have enabled:

• ComfortDrag (When dragging a file, right click hides a window without letting go of left mouse button)
• ComfortResize (Right+left click+drag anywhere on a window causes resize (e.g. chordclickdrag in the top left quadrant resizes as if you had clickdragged from the top left window border)
• DriveIcons (adds an icon for any drive with media to your desktop like linux/mac. I actually have it add to a quick launch-type toolbar on my windows taskbar. This makes disabling autorun quite feasible.)
• NewFolder (use a hotkey to create a new folder in Windows Explorer. I've got this mapped to F7, same as WinSCP.)
• PastePlain (Win+V pastes without formatting)
• RemapKeys (Turns CapsLock into an extra shift key)
• Surrounder (Highlight some text and hit a quote, parenthesis, bracket, etc. and it will enclose the selection rather than replacing it.)

Eric

[nite_monkey]

Some of those sound pretty good. I'll have to try it out when I get home.

[lanux128]

i came across ac'tivAid some time back but it was in German only, no English readme was available. i had to read through the code to figure out what was the script about. now that they're in English as well, it's a good time to take a look again.

[ayryq]

I have one-at-a-time turned off the extensions I was using until I'm down to two:
RemapKeys (turn CapsLock into Shift) and
DriveIcons (dynamically add shortcut icons to currently-available drives to an arbitrary folder)

I just found a AHK script at lifehacker which will let me disable the RemapKeys. At this point it seems weird to run the whole ac'tivAid application for the one drive-icons script. Has anyone written an AHK script to do this? Ac'tivAid is all AHK so it may be possible to reverse-engineer one from the script included (which seems to have a lot of code supporting the ac'tivAid interface and options). The important thing to me is support of an arbitrary folder... several tray apps exist which stick icons on the desktop like a Mac, but I put them in a custom "toolbar" folder for the windows task bar.

Eric

[Tuxman]

Meanwhile, the original ac'tivAid author abandoned his project. It is continued by Michael Telgkamp, if anyone is interested... I've been using ac'tivAid since v0.9x, it didn't even have a GUI back then.



On topic:
I currently use these:

• AutoShutdown
  Win+Q to shut down now or in a couple of minutes is one of the essential things for me, especially when I'm in a hurry.
• FileRenamer
  Yep, most file managers do this. But this one does everything I need. So why should I use something other?
• HotStrings
  Currently only used for fun, but sometimes I use it for serious stuff, like automatically replacing "rg" with "Regards, <name>".
• LeoTooltip
  As you might know, English is not my native language. Sometimes I need to look up a word here to talk to you. Pressing a shortcut is the easiest way for that, right?
• NewFolder
  Again, most file managers already know a hotkey to create a new folder. However, this extension has some nice additions like automatically creating subfolders and moving selected files there instantly.
• QuickNote
  Why should I use Notepad for that?
• RemapKeys
  CapsLock be gone!
• UserHotkeys
  My command prompt is on Ctrl-Alt-Space, my scanner on Win+S. It really improves my computer usage.
• Volume Control
  (Stupid loudness war.)
• WindowsControl
  Most things can also be done with tools like the Actual Window Manager. But they aren't free. 

[Curt]

Will ac'tivAid ever come out of the BETA age? I know he is calling the new version for "1.3.2", but it is still called an "Entwicklerversion", a beta-version, only this time it is beta version number 17. Is it STABLE?

The new homepage is in German only. What then about the program; is it still in both German and English, or has it also gone back to German only?

[Tuxman]

AFAICS it is stable. Latest changes are only some internal updates. I haven't experienced "major" problems with it.
The "old" (English, German and French) bug tracker - http://activaid.rumborak.de - is still used for bug reports, however.

The application itself is German and English. They didn't remove the English strings, don't worry.  

[Curt]

- thanks for the answer. Meanwhile I've realized that one merely should follow the bugtracker link http://activaid.rumborak.de/index/proj2?lang=en in order to come to a useful forum.

So, the latest stable version is 1.3.1, and the real homepage seems to be www.heise.de/ct/activaid which at the moment will re-direct you to the all German http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/Windows-weitergedacht-ac-tivAid-284115.html ; ("weitergedacht" = thought/taken further), where the stable version of the program can be found, with or without installer.

If you find bugs in a stable version, please first check the latest beta version before you report the bug!

--

In general, International user-friendliness is not the project's strongest side, it seems. But what about a simple link to all these extensions 'we' are talking about? I haven't found any! Are they all build into the program from scratch? Do I need to install the program in order to figure out what it can do? No, I must have missed to see the obvious. I must have gotten myself confused by all these German words. Please direct me to all the extensions this very thread itself is all about!

[ayryq]

Well, here is the ReadMe file, from the version I've got installed (1.3.1), which has descriptions (in English) of the extensions:

http://ericandchar.com/activAidReadMe.txt

[Tuxman]

In general, International user-friendliness is not the project's strongest side, it seems.

Developed by a German computer magazine, primarily for German users ... well then.
(You English speaking people do expect that we all have to know English, too, so what?  )

Are they all build into the program from scratch?

They are implemented as modules, single script files that can be loaded dynamically. Not actually "built into it".

[Curt]

Developed by a German computer magazine, primarily for German users ... well then.
(You English speaking people do expect that we all have to know English, too, so what? 

The program coding is in English, so why stop there? Just as we in Denmark also learns German, so does the Germans also learn English, if you know what I mean.

They are implemented as modules, single script files that can be loaded dynamically. Not actually "built into it".

Thank you for the answer.

[Tuxman]

Just as we in Denmark also learns German, so does the Germans also learn English, if you know what I mean.

Sure, but why is it important then if it is English, German or whatever?

[Curt]

[Darwin]

Just as we in Denmark also learns German, so does the Germans also learn English, if you know what I mean.

Sure, but why is it important then if it is English, German or whatever?

Touché! Oh, sorry, that's French. Now I'm really confused 

[Tuxman]

At least French is not a language which is spoken by decadent Victorian warlords.

[cranioscopical]

At least French is not a language which is spoken by decadent Victorian warlords.

Au contraire nous parlons français quand il est essentiel. Mais nous préférons parler plus fort en anglais

[Curt]

At least French is not a language which is spoken by decadent Victorian warlords.

- who do you think inhabited Canada?

[Tuxman]

Canadians.