Author Topic: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands (Read 315,325 times)

ewemoa · « **Reply #150 on:** July 06, 2011, 01:51 AM »

Thanks for the update

Ath · « **Reply #151 on:** July 27, 2011, 12:26 PM »

Since there have been no further support requests on WinButtonEdit for several weeks, I decided to make a formal release of

WinButtonEdit 1.0.0.0

It's only a version-bump since the last RC10 release, but to get it requires a re-download of the zipfile at the original release post

Support questions, feature requests or remarks are, as always, welcome

cranioscopical · « **Reply #152 on:** July 27, 2011, 03:12 PM »

Quote

WinButtonEdit 1.0.0.0

There's a milestone, well done!

ewemoa · « **Reply #153 on:** July 28, 2011, 12:16 AM »

Congratulations on the release

nudone · « **Reply #154 on:** August 25, 2011, 05:12 PM »

I've just come across this, Keypad Pro, http://keypadpro.dopplerthepom.com/Home.html whilst trying to find a touchscreen app that would work with an old HP 5500 Pocket PC.

Okay, you need an iPad, but I'd consider buying one specially if I didn't already have one - the benefits are that you can create your own layouts to use with specific programs.

I'm going to buy it and test it out.

(I was still hoping to buy a mini touchscreen to use with WinButton but the reviews I've seen for many touchscreens seems to indicate there are many problems with 64 bit drivers. Which means I kind of abandoned the mini touchscreen idea. I'm pleased to see that WinButton is now 1.0.0.0.)

nudone · « **Reply #155 on:** August 25, 2011, 06:56 PM »

Okay, I'm still liking the capabilities of WinButton over the iPad, Keypad Pro. The important feature being program aware context switching layouts.

I have to ask, though, has anyone had WinButtons working on a mini touchscreen, such as a MIMO or a Lilliput device.

The main problem I foresee is that when pressing the touchscreen to activate WinButton, it will cause the mouse cursor to jump to the touchscreen button location - where it will then stay and require moving back with the mouse - which isn't really what is desired when using a touchscreen. (Sorry, if this problem has already been resolved and I've just not been keeping oup with the thread.)

Ath · « **Reply #156 on:** August 25, 2011, 07:01 PM »

Quote from: nudone on August 25, 2011, 05:12 PM

I'm pleased to see that WinButton is now 1.0.0.0

It's WinButtonEdit, the configuration editor for WinButtons, that has gone the 1.0 release

, WinButtons is already on v3.3.2

I tried to do something for Android devices acting as the controller-device by using/modifying PRemoteDroid, but I couldn't get it to work (no WiFi - dev-PC connection available, and USB also doesn't work for me) and the project seems to be abandoned by it's developer(s)

Ath · « **Reply #157 on:** August 25, 2011, 07:03 PM »

Quote from: nudone on August 25, 2011, 06:56 PM

cause the mouse cursor to jump to the touchscreen button location

I didn't get that far into it, so I don't have any solution for that built in. I'll see if I can anticipate a fix for that

nudone · « **Reply #158 on:** August 25, 2011, 07:10 PM »

Ah, right, sorry, Ath. I wondered why you'd changed the name to WinButtonEdit - because you hadn't.

If the reviews were more positive for the available touchscreens I'd buy one right now and then try and help out with testing WinButtons.

I think I'll try the iPad thing. See if I can tolerate having to manually swap the button layouts for each program I switch to, hate it, then just order a MIMO screen...

Ath · « **Reply #159 on:** September 02, 2011, 08:20 PM »

I added a new feature to WinButtons: CursorRestore, on a request from nudone in this thread.
When enabled, the cursor is restored to it's last know position, outside of the WinButtons window. To be used if WinButtons is positioned on a (external) touch-screen.

WinButtons 3.4.0

Next to supporting the new CursorRestore option, WinButtonsEdit also displays the current (Top, Left) position of the preview window (if enabled), and has a menu-option to copy those coordinates to the Global Top and Left fields, so the preview can be dragged to the desired position, and used as startup coordinates for WinButtons.

WinButtonEdit 1.0.1.1

Download available from the release message, linking to my DCMembers pages.

It really needs real-world testing, but any feedback is welcome

nudone · « **Reply #160 on:** September 03, 2011, 10:23 AM »

Great. Looking forward to trying this now. The touchscreen was delivered today BUT I was out, so it's now on the way back to the local depot; which means I won't be able to collect it until Monday (two days away).

nudone · « **Reply #161 on:** September 03, 2011, 10:37 AM »

Ath, pm me your address details and I'll look for a MYMO touchscreen to send you. Amazon (UK) looks like they are out of stock for a while, so might have to try elsewhere.

nudone · « **Reply #162 on:** September 03, 2011, 03:32 PM »

I thought I'd put together a set of WinButtons for testing out for when I'll have the touchscreen configured. I think I've got the hang of constructing a matrix of buttons using WinButtonEdit, seems relatively simple for something that could be very difficult

One major problem I've hit immediately is that I'm incapable of sending a simple keyboard hotkey combination. I know this must be simple to do, I've managed to make a button send words, i.e. keystrokes, to a text editor (Notepad++). I just can't figure out how to send something so basic as "ctrl + n", for "open new file". I've tried several combinations of what I think might be correct by reading the winbuttons readme, the WindSendKeys webpage and the autoit send keys list - which only confuse matters as they don't have identical instructions.

So, any idiot-proof instruction will help. Do I need to use pauses between keystrokes or something, or put things is square brackets, or ???

(Obviously, I'll be wanting to send more complicated hotkey keystrokes than ctrl+n when I know the correct syntax to use.)

Thanks

nudone · « **Reply #163 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:10 PM »

Okay, I've got the basic CTRL + N working with {ctrldown} n {ctrlup}. Now, another problem, I can't get the button to recognise Photoshop, which I assume is because Photoshop's window title doesn't actually contain the word "Photoshop" in it.

But, I do see that it the word "Photoshop" does appear in the ahk_class when I use the window spying tool that comes with autohotkey.

Is there a way to use these non window title program names with WinButtons. (If not, then that's pretty much the end of my touchscreen experiment before it even began.)

nudone · « **Reply #164 on:** September 03, 2011, 04:39 PM »

Okay, moving slowly but making progress; I now have Photoshop responding by using [CLASS:Photoshop]. Now, just need to figure out how to make the buttons layout change depending on which program has focus.

edit:
right, I see "Groups" control the button layouts depending on the the program in focus. So, that's good.

I think I'm ready to start putting together a real set of buttons to now.

One thing I've just noticed is that it takes a while to redraw the buttons as they flick between the Groups. I've got 40 buttons on display in each group; is this pushing WinButtons to its limits?

Ath · « **Reply #165 on:** September 04, 2011, 10:03 AM »

@nudone, I'm glad you are getting the hang of it already

I was out for a party, yesterday, so I didn't get to see your messages until now.

The Ctrl-N keystroke could also have been specified using {ctrl}n (without spaces), but that's just a minor detail, and some applications can need the keystrokes to be sent a bit slower, as will happen if you send {ctrldown} n {ctrlup} using WinSendKeys.

Quote from: nudone on September 03, 2011, 04:39 PM

One thing I've just noticed is that it takes a while to redraw the buttons as they flick between the Groups. I've got 40 buttons on display in each group; is this pushing WinButtons to its limits?

I haven't tried WinButtons with that number of buttons yet, I usually work with 10 to 12 buttons, but as I have quite fast PC's atm, I don't notice any slowness. I'll have to try on a less capable system, but I'm not sure I have much tuning options there, while using plain AutoIt3 code.

The main event-loop is triggered every 100 msec, maybe it would help if you tune that to say 50 or 60 msec, so the response on changing application focus is somewhat more snappy. Setting it lower than 20 msec is going to get you into performance trouble, I guess, as the processing during each loop does need some time.
This value needs to be changed in the source directly (WinButtons.au3, find the line with 'Sleep(100)' and change it accordingly, then run the au3 file or recompile using AutoIt3), I'll probably add a setting for that to a next release of WinButtons/WBE.

nudone · « **Reply #166 on:** September 05, 2011, 09:25 AM »

Ath, I've got the touchscreen setup up now. It works better than I could have hoped for. Because of it being a new "project" to talk about I've started a new thread here: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=27865.msg260706#msg260706

I'll get the touchscreen ordered for you later today. You are going to love it - it's revolutionary!

Ath · « **Reply #167 on:** September 06, 2011, 10:33 PM »

I updated the CursorRestore feature of WinButtons, giving it a configurable buffersize so the "can't restore the mouse cursor because I don't remember any more positions" situation should happen a little less often.
The setting is renamed from 'Restore cursor after button' to 'CursorRestore buffer' on the Global parameters page in WinButtonEdit.
Selectable values are Off, Small, Regular, Medium and Large. The old default was a buffersize of Small.

Here's an update release of:

WinButtons 3.4.1

and

WinButtonEdit 1.0.2.0

Download available from the release message, linking to my DCMembers pages.

nudone is already doing a lot of real-world testing

, but more feedback is welcome, as usual

nudone · « **Reply #168 on:** September 07, 2011, 01:08 PM »

(Ath, I've posted in the other thread about problems with the update.)

nudone · « **Reply #169 on:** September 07, 2011, 06:26 PM »

I've not tried this, so apologies for being lazy, but can WinButtons send a command to the last active program, or does it do this by default.

I was planning in making a generic button layout that would act like the number keypad on a typical keyboard. For this to be of use it would have to be able to send the standard number keypad commands to a whole range of programs - to make that simple I'd assume it to be the last active window - excluding any program windows that are in the WinButtons "groups".

Extending this a little further, if a "group" related program was active and therefore its button template was active too, could this special group be overridden with a toggle button to then display the more "generic" number keypad button layout.

I'm unsure of how sophisticated WinButtons already is so this might be a feature already included, i.e. a toggle button template override kind of feature.

Ath · « **Reply #170 on:** September 07, 2011, 06:39 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 07, 2011, 06:26 PM

to make that simple I'd assume it to be the last active window

Haven't tried that (yet), but it would be a nice feature, expect improvements after I receive the touchscreen

Quote from: nudone on September 07, 2011, 06:26 PM

display the more "generic" number keypad button layout.

A feature similar to that is on my todo list, I was thinking of a 'DisplayAlways' group, but temporarily hiding it would be useful too.
This can be nearly achieved by running 2 instances of WinButtons, one on the left or top half and the other on the right or bottom half of the TouchScreen. WBE has a feature to use current Preview location as Top/Left coordinates, so positioning would be fairly easy

nudone · « **Reply #171 on:** September 07, 2011, 06:57 PM »

I guess a "lock" template feature would be nice too, i.e. force a "group" template to appear all the time regardless of whether its related program is in focus.

Ath · « **Reply #172 on:** September 07, 2011, 07:27 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 07, 2011, 06:57 PM

I guess a "lock" template feature would be nice too, i.e. force a "group" template to appear all the time regardless of whether its related program is in focus.

Yup, that's what I had in mind.

Ath · « **Reply #173 on:** September 07, 2011, 08:08 PM »

Oops, so now I've found the bug that stopped WinButtons 3.4.1 from working properly

A quick update is available:

WinButtons 3.4.1.1

Please re-download from the original release thread

WinButtonEdit wasn't hindered by this issue, so wasn't changed.

I have a list of some feature requests, compiled from what was said in this thread and this 'praise' thread by nudone, but any other comment, tip or whatever is welcome

It was suggested (by PM) that a mouse-position-buffer wouldn't be needed if I kept the last position of the cursor outside of the WinButtons window, but I'll test with the touchscreen that is due to arrive, and eventually remove that code if it doesn't add anything useful.

Ath · « **Reply #174 on:** September 11, 2011, 03:50 PM »

After the generously receiving a 7" MIMO touchscreen from nudone I was able to do some real touch-testing myself.

It's been real fun

I solved some issues with application focus, and added a few features, like getting program updates by selecting that option from WinButtonEdit (using mouser's dcuhelper),
and a feature I called FlipKeyColor, reverting the button colors on activation for at least 250 msec. to better indicate a button was touched effectively.

All this was on my (private) todo list (there's some more), distilled from these threads and PM's received

, and improves the usability of WinButtons combined with a touch-screen, IMHO.
WinButtonEdit got a few bugfixes, all details are in the readme.txt files.

Here's an update release of:

WinButtons 3.4.2.2

and

WinButtonEdit 1.0.3.1

Download available from the release message, linking to my DCMembers pages.

Any feedback is still welcome, as usual