Alexis

Does anyone at least can verify the problem? As I can see the file has been downloaded several times. Thank you. Alexandra

For my software projects i´m used to design my own icons. I did so for my floating menus using Axialis IconWorkshop 6. Surprisingly they do not appear on the menu correctly. Sometimes there is a dark, grey square, sometimes nothing. They are always perfectly displayed in the Macro Explorer, but not in the menu! What are the limitations? I attached two 24x24 icons one with 256 and one with 18.6 M Colours. If you try out the two icons, you´ll see what i mean. By the way. If i change the appearence of an used icon, i have to restart MEX in order to see the changes, right? Thank You. Alexandra 24x24_256.ico 24x24_16_8M.ico

Don´t know what you mean with disaster. I can launch .exe files, .mxe files and a lot more from word. Why not those macros directly from the library i programmed myself? What´s the MAJOR Security issue/difference? As you are from ISS i would like to say that i´m very, very happy i figured out this workaround made possible by your playable macro-feature. Do i get a T-Shirt now? Regards Alexandra

Hi Floyd, hi everybody else there is a seperate post which explains the functionality and also the need for a kind of ALT+TAB Command. I think this makes it quite clear. Bye Alexandra

Congratulation! WE HAVE A WINNER HERE! The german quotes begins down and ends up. As i designed the path in MS Word German and copied it in the run window it did not work. Every quote there has to be up. Nevertheless i´m disapointed. I guess you Cory and Kevin are right. Putting the path in a hyperlink in Word does not work. I´m not 100% sure about. I experience problems entering the correct path. (At least now i know which path is correct) I want those macroactivating hyperlinks in word. And i want them bad. This would be awesome. Can you/somebody me explain what exactly is the problem? As long i have a workaround: Export the needed macros as a Playable File (.mxe). The MEX3 Editor supports multiple selection/export as .mxe of macros. Make a word-hyperlink to that file. It works. Unfortunately a nasty Security Window in Word appears. To get rid of that one you: Open the windows explorer Go to Extras (left from ?) Folderoptions Filetypes Select the Filetype MXE Press Advanced (or similar) Uncheck "Confirm after download" --- Done --- Have fun with Macros activated via MS Word! As Kevin pointed out those commandlines work in Windows-Shortcuts as well! So this may make those Floating Menus less important. Alexandra

:lol: Got it: Guess which one is working of those and why (not) ! "C:\Programme\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe" /AGoogle „C:\Programme\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe" /AGoogle The answer i will post after at least one guess Alexandra

Absolutely, i could not recognize this space in the book. But even „C:\Programme\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe“ /AGoogle (with space) leads to the same result. It does not work in the run window. Because of the error-message: "C:\Programme\Macro could not be found" i think it has something to do that the path contains already space: Macro Express3 as this is where the message ends. but your macros are working in the run window, right? Very strange. Thank you. Alexandra

Sorry, i mean secret Microsoft stuff. But Joe, an opinion to this discussion would have been nice too! You already read everything to find my tiny fourletterword at the end, haven´t you? Floyd and maybe others still believes a window-title and a process (can consist of multible windows with varous titles) is the same. I could use a little help here to convince him. Alexandra

Hi Cory, i am very glad you are here I have this tiny macro called "Google" so i put in (as a target in the hyperlink) „C:\Programme\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe“/AGoogle (Programme is German for Program Files) When clicking on the link i got the error message. Checking the path in the link i see: „C:/Programme/Macro%20Express3/MeProc.exe“/AGoogle So C:\ has become C:/ and i have the %20 added. ?!? This works also not in the run window, although i get a different message: "C:\Programme\Macro could not be found. This looks like it has something to to do with space. But what exactly? Do your macros run from Word? I would like to describe a workflow in word with some macros accessable from the text via hyperlinks on the way. Wouldn´t that be nice? Thank you, once more. Alexandra

As explained in the book "MEX3 Explained" on Page 106 the correct synthax/path to activate a macro from the library is "C:\Program Files\Macro Express3\MeProc.exe"/A You place the name of the macro directly (without Space) after the A. I´m not so sure about the quotes. I tried out with and without them. I get an "Could not open File"- Error always. (I made a hyperlink in MS Word and put in the path as the target.) By the way, why gets my path manipulated by 20%strings etc. Does anyone has an idea? Thank you Alexandra

Hi Floyd, hi Cory, i still feel misunderstood But i think it´s my fault. Maybe because im not an native Englisch-Speaker it´s not so easy to make things clear. I tried every possible way to hide/show those toolbars (FM). Actually enabling/disabling was my first choice. I discarded it right away because it takes too long (2 sec), all displayed FM begins to flicker, and it is stealing focus. Of course Floyd, you can prevent this by Activating the Source-Window again. You will not experience those problems with Floyds Example. But you will, if you have just one more temporarily toolbar and one which is constantly floating on your screen. Try it out. And the activating Window Command after the Enabling-Command causes of course the wildly discusssed problem. We can stick to the outlook example. But the problem occurs always if the source window has a different name than a window which is produced by the macro or even by hand. With your example Floyd, if i go to outlook and type SHFT+CTRL+M to create an new message i don´t see it very long because the macro is activating the main screen (MS Outlook) right over it quite quick. Maybe this is unsolvable. Lets be constructive. I´m building up a feature request list. For this problem it would be: Macro activation possible also by process name. (not only by window title) Possibilty to activate a process not a window title. Possiblity to switch through the last tasks (like ALT+TAB) Wait for Macro (Title) finished Command. (to prevent conflicts) Ability to show/hide toolbars(FM) instantly without letting them gain focus at all. Showing hints while hovering over inactive toolbars. (i know it´s windows fault! ) What do you think. Alexandra

Wow, guys this thread is getting really busy. Interesting! Thank you. As both of you are not so familiar with floating menus i would like to share some insights, i made so far. FM are for me better than Popups because i have enough space (4 Monitors) and the macro needed is one click away, always at the same place. Actually, even large numbers of FM are not causing any trouble, as long they are not automatically manipulated (for example by window-activation) If you want to show/hide them, to increase overview in case you have lots of them, the best way is to manipulate them by the command "Set Window Order" ("to always be on top" vs. "to the bottom") Other possible commands like minimize/restore or enable/disable are causing trouble because they can give the focus to the FM which you don´t want. My Logitech G15 Macro Keyboard is constantly scanning the current process. If i used other commands i only get the application focus for a second. Than the focus goes to the FM and the macro keys on the keyboard don´t work. By the way the darker blue colour of the FM for showing active window is not reliable. My LCD on the G15 is! At the moment i have 3 programspecfic Floaters constantly running. And i have 3 programspecific Macros all with the same Hotkey. If i need programspecific Macros i press it, and the corresponding FM appears where i left it. This is nice, but not as good as get them automatically displayed. I still would like to work on that. Thank you Alexandra

Actually i like Floating Menus because i can perform my macros with a click on a customized icon without the need to memorize keycommands. But now i have some tiny macros which make sense to run even in different applications. Those macros do not begin with an “Activate window” – Command. I thought they will naturally perform in the active window. The one i was working in. Well, was is the point. The moment i click on the floating menu this one becomes the active window and nothing happens because my macro runs in the floating menu, i guess. How do i tell MEX to go to the window/process which was active/got focus right before clicking on the floating menu. Any idea? I thought of Text-Typing Alt+Tab or Shift+Alt+Tab but because of an ALT+Tab Replacement Tool i installed this works very slow. I hope there is a command in MEX3 to go to the previous task. Thank you very much. Alexandra

Thanks Cory, actually i don´t know about the sequenze. The Floating Menu appears later so i think you may be right that the "New Message Command" is performed before. But as you know the resulting new message window has no "Microsoft Outlook" in its title. So eventually the macro doesn´t fire at all. (By the way, that was the reason i asked for process not window activated macros.) The crazyness are two things. In the example above after the macro the new message-window does not have focus but another program. Word most of the time. Other macros are focussing other programs after running. To get to the original program, the one which was "makronized" i have to press Alt+Tab once. (Can i perform something similar with MEX?) Sometimes MEX is switching between those 3 applications endlessly. Focussing other programs via mouse stops that game. Everything is working normally with the shower macros disabled. As i posted those just have 3 script lines. I assume some focus problems. Its a pity that ISS do not document which command/window operations steals the focus and which not. You have to try out so much. I think the best is to try it yourself: Word Floating Shower: <ZORDER:0:Word Floating><ZORDER:2:Outlook Floating><ZORDER:2:Firefox Floating> Firefox Floating Shower <ZORDER:0:Firefox Floating><ZORDER:2:Word Floating><ZORDER:2:Outlook Floating> Outlook Floating Shower <ZORDER:0:Outlook Floating><ZORDER:2:Word Floating><ZORDER:2:Firefox Floating> Make 3 Floating Menus with the corresponding Names. Than run a normal Macro adressing Outlook for example. En / Disabling Window Activation Caching did not change much. Thanks again very much. Alexandra

Well Cory, thank you very much, but because i have enough macros running on applications not capable of beeing executed with parameters i have to get this problem solved. If you tell me that there is now way to make one macro waiting for the other one or any other workaround for my problem i have one item more to add to the ISS Wishlist (Christmas is close ) Thank you Alexandra

Thank you Cory, thank you Paul, i still have the hope to fix this in MEX. As long i will not install other tools. Actually it´s quite simple: I have 3 applications: Word, Outlook, Firefox. I made 3 Floating Menus. One for each of them. As those nasty beasts keep floating on top of everything i decided to make 3 additional macros. Again, one for each. I call those shower macros. Those macros set the window order of the three floating menus depending of the active window. This is the scripting code of "Firefox Shower": Set Window Order: Set "Firefox Floating" to always be on top Set Window Order: Set "Outlook Floating" to the bottom Set Window Order: Set "Word Floating" to the bottom This macro is activated by window "Mozilla Firefox" The two other showers work accordingly. This works perfectly. With a short delay you get to see only the relevant specific menu. And they appear where you left them. You should try out this. I should be happy. I am, but... Well, Problems occur when i use my other floating menu. Yes, i have a fourth one. And this is the biggest one of all. Its my Gloabal Floater and has a special place reserved on my desktop. I do not go to Outlook and press a Hotkey to send a message. A macro is doing that for me. It begins of course with "Activate Windowtitle Microsoft Outlook". By now i guess you figured out the problem: By activating Outlook the corresponding shower macro fires and MEX is goin crazy. I think it has something to do with the fact MEX only can run one macro at the time. What i need would be a command like "wait for macro finished" or "Pause/continue macro xy" Maybe i should try out the "wait for window" commands or the Delay, Timed Delay-Commands. Did not understand yet whats the difference between those. Any suggestions are wildly appreciated Alexandra

Well, not really! Problems come back when i use other macros. MEX begins switching windows back and forth. I think it has something to do with the fact MEX runs only one Macro at the time. Although the code aktivated by the windows is really simple. (3 Set Order Commands to put one on top and 2 on bottom.) But enough to confuse MEX. Do you think there will be a way to achieve those aplication specifically appearing Floating Menus (ASAFM) ?? I will try disabling the shower macros when performing the external macros and putting the Setting Window Orders directly in there if needed.

Thank you very much Cory for your long, sensible and detailed response. Nobody wants to bash a product which is great overall. At the moment i´m making a list of features i miss for ISS. But as a newbie i have to be sure that i do not request stuff i just overlooked. This forum helps me with that. I´m sorry i wrote the post in a frustated state. Actually i was quite sure that those "missed" features would be explained to me in a reply like other topics already have by the friendly and compent users here. But you are right. ISS cannot think of everything. Let me explain in detail whats my goal because it can be useful for everybody here. Activating macros with keycommands is not my thing. Thanks the power of MEX3-Macros (hey i´m getting positive right now ) i´m using lots of them and i can´t memorize all those hotkeys. So i like Floating Menus. But i want them specific for each application. And i only want to see them if the application is active. So i would have a bar of icons i can drag freely within the window i´m working with with all the macros i might need while using it. If i switch to another application the current Floating bar closes and a new specific bar appears. Would you agree this would be a comfortable way to have access to your macros? I certainly think so. At the moment i have all floating bars enabled and use additional Shower-Macros which fires Hide / Show Commands by window activation. One of my current problems ist those Hide /Show commands steals the focus from the clicked/selected window. (By the way I´m not using eabling/disabling because its to slow.) So i added an activate window command in the Shower-Macros to return to the target application. Now, by selecting a window the applicationspecifc floating menu appears while the others disappear. Not to bad. But it takes about a second and the focus goes: 1 application - 2 floating bar - 3 application. Actually "3 application" is not true because i only can specify a window. Problems occur if i run macros which causes the target application to open new windows (like writing a new message in outlook) than i don´t see the message window because the Shower-macro will activate the window "Microsoft Outlook". (Or if the windowname of the application changes.) This would not be the case if there would be a way to just switch to a process like alt +tab. But i think i found some kind of workaround. If i use the command "Setting window order" for my floating menus instead of Show/Hide the Floating Menus do not get focus. This looks very good. So i don´t need an activate window command. Problems gone. I have to check this out. (Actually i thought of trying out "Reposition Window" first but i could not find a command "Get Window Position" and i would like to arrange the floating menus freely. Is there a way to get the coordinates of an specifc window?) Thank you so far. Alexandra

If it comes to handling applications MEX3 seems to miss some important commands. To get some programspezific floating menus i wrote some macros. What´s really missing is the possibility to activate macros not by a window title but by the topmost active program. Even worse: MEX3 ist not capable to switch to a running programm also this is described everywhere (In the book "MEX explained", in the wizard) . Instead it only can activate windows. But the windows-names of many programs are constantly changing. Specifying a certain title can cause problems. And if you choose launch program you get multiple instances or new documents you certainly not need. What i want is not much. I want to get the program and the documents corresponding with that programm activated and displayed the way i left them. Just the way it works when i use the Alt+Tab Command to go back to a application. (The command should go like: "Activate Process OUTLOOK.EXE") I can´t believe this is not possible. Please proove me wrong. Thank you.

First of all thank you very much for answering. Well i´m not sure about that. There are lots of examples for windows showing hints without having focus. Actually every window does! Try hoovering about the close button of an inactive window for a moment. I thought of the workaround rightclicking the floating menu just for activating. But i still have the problem that MEX3 is not showing hints even with the window active. At least not 90 % of the time. And if so it takes to long to appear, (Can i set the delay to zero?) and disappears without reason. I guess i really have to be sure about those icons. Frustating. What´s bad too, is that those floating menus steal the focus. If i have a nickname popup menu and i press escape or want to launch a programmspecific macro from there this floating menu gets focus so my macro can not figure out which program ist running. Does not make sense to me. Sometimes those nickname popup menu stay dark blue (active) but instead of performing the macro of the activating letter i just type this letter in my application. Why is that? Nice to know that 2-4 works. Also i´m far more sceptical now. Thank you.

I would like to write a tiny macro that minimize all windows, except for the active one. My approach is to get the title of the active window with a Variable Set String / Set Value to Topmost Window Title - Command. Then i let perform Win + D to minimize all windows. I thought of using an Restore Window - Command next for the window i saved the title to a variable. But those commands seem not to accept variables like T1, right? What a pity! Is there a workaround? Thanks Alexandra

It would be great to get some help here I´m trying to make my own programspecific context menus by using popup menus in Windows Default Style. I use another macro to activate those macros just to get and save the mouse coordinates up front in case i need the original ones for some macros. (By selecting a macro with a mouse those are destroyed) This works fine. The context menu appears at the mouseposition and looks as good as build in But when i start other macros from that menu MEX3 crashes. I get lots of Window error messages or the runningman won´t stop. If i put the mousepointer over him most of the time a hint appears with the name of Popupmenu Macro. I thought this macro ends the moment i choose a macro from it !?! That happens even with the simplest macros like copy to clipboard. Thank you Alexandra

Hi everybody, today i would like to share a dream with you. A dream where a tiny but mighty program called MEX3 helps us with every single task/program on the pc we have to deal with while working. It constantly offers us help in various ways. But it never bothers, or is stealing our concentration. My vision is: On the left side (right one is occupied by my mouse ) of my computer keyboard if have a 15" LCD-Touchscreen Monitor mounted with an 30 degree angle on the desktop. The monitor works in liftoff-mode. That means: While touching the monitor only mousemoves are emulated. The mouseclick ist emulated in the moment my finger leaves the monitor. This monitor has only one purpose: It is to display and to run MEX-Macros. Those Macros are displayed in Popupmenus (Macrobars) preferebly as icons. (freely available in the web) Those Macrobars are window/program - specific - activated. To increase overview, only macrobars specific for the active window/program are displayed. They are visible, as long the corresponding window/program has focus. While touching the screen, (moving the mouse over the icons) hints are constantly displayed to prevent starting the wrong macro. After performing the macro the mousepointer is where it was before working with the touchscreen. Although MEX3 already has many of the needed functionality mentioned above, i think there are mainly 4 things that keep me from realising my goal. At the moment: 1. Macrobars unfortunately does not show hints if not active. 2. It ist not possible to start a macrobar just by activating a window/program. 3. It is not possible to close a macrobar by changing the focus of a window/program. 4. It is not possible to run more than one macrobar at the time or to arrange them nicely on the screen. Maybe i overlooked some hidden features. Is it possible, somehow? What do you think of the idea? Thanks Alexandra

Thank you guys. After rebooting my pc it does show the hints again now. But i think its a shame that the hints are not showing if the window (macrobar) does not have focus. For example, if i worked with another window after activating the macrobar. Have you ever tried to activate the macrobar window without pressing a macrobar button? Very tricky! The macrobar-window does constantly react if i put the mousepointer over it even while not active. (appearence of buttons changes). It should be possible to show the hints too, right? I would need those feature for "THE GREATEST MEX3 FUNCTIONALITY EVER" I´ll start a new thread for that Thank you Alexandra

Hi guys, i love to start my macros with a click of the mouse. (I can´t remember all those Hotkeys. ) So macrobars with a lot of icons are my thing. But i definitly need those yellow boxes (hints) with the name of that macro which normally appear while hovering with the mousepointer over it to stop me from starting the wrong one. THIS COULD BE VERY BAD Unfortunately those hints do not appear anymore. What can i do? Thank you Alexandra