t.s.lim

Hi, I use PPPoE dialup to connect to my ADSL service in WinXP+SP2 I have a macro with the below 2 commands: If Dial-Up Successful: "xxxx" Dial-Up Networking: Hang Up immediately after execution they will cause subsequent run of "Text Box Display: xxxx" to appar corrupted. I mean the dialog is up, but with Window title only, the dialog clent area is transparent, with no text inside. The Text Box diaply will remain so durng which WinXP is either trying to show/hide the connection icon in system tray. The same macro works nicely in earlier ver of ME. Can you fix it?

Hi, I received a notice telling me one of my requested feature will be in the next ver on April 2006, I am so eager to have that feature (that I have been requesting for the past few years) I remember it was some time in Nov 2005 that I last update ME to ver 3.5e and now one full year has passed, is there any update soon?

There are several reasons for this: ... I don't even remember there is such "request a feature" page. I suggest put a sticky and striking link to the top of this forum. Normally after I registered a software product, if there is a supporting forum I will usually visit it and hardy go back to the product home/support page. This is great, I have received such email on 8th this month: I also buy lot of software online. Among all, I think the Outpost firewall forum has the best way of suggesting feature, they put requested features into sticky POLL threads. Unfortunately, the forum is not an official forum supported by the developer, so even though a feature migh be highly requested by users - it can still be a dream feature which never come true. Since this forum is an official one, how nice if we could have something similar: http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=41

Thanks

Hi Joe, What is the original filename for that small gif?

Hi joe, Your AVATAR is great! Where do you get that, do you have a JPG, can you give me a copy? I won't use it as avatar anyway, may be as a wallpaper

Hi inokenti, When having more and more scheduling tasks (through program like ME), I am concern about the ease of maintaining. It is not that much about spending extra penny to get another program that does the job, but my top priority is to run as little scheduling program as possible (preferably only a single one). Theoritically, the less scheduling program one use, the less resource is required and if only one scheduling program is being used then there is only one place to manage all the scheduled tasks (centralize the maintenance). In my case I won't and will be very reluctant to ADD another program to do what ME can't (or has difficulty to achieve). But I think everyone has a tolerance limit, when more and more scheduling has to be "run once", I think I will resort to droping ME and get a better replacement... (I hope I don't have to) In fact, what you want (and what I want) can also be done by writing to a temp file (as someone has suggested to me in the past, please check it out if you are interested). Well as a registered user to ME I prefer the future ver of the program to add that feature (and make life much easier both in creating and maintaining run-once-macro) than resort to a workaround. I am sorry, IMO, so far, suggestions seems to be workaround than a proper solution! I hope I am not offending anyone by saying so... t.s.lim

Execuse me for jumping in at this point: What inokenti wants is similar to my past request for schedule feature. While I want a macro run once (at no pin pointed time) daily, weekly or monthly, inokenti wants it to run once N minutes after startup. I have been staring at ME's schedule dialog for nearly half and hour after reading inokenti post (which reminds me what I have suggested in the past), I think there is a design flaw in the ME's schedule system: 1) There are 9 kind of scheduling methods (from the schedule dialog): 'At startup', 'Once', ..., 'Load file' but I think 8 will be enough. Because the run macro 'Once' is actually a repeat of run macro 'Daily', please see the attached picture. 2) I strongly suggest, rather than putting it as a schedule method, 'Once' should be a setting within other schedule methods. Example, Hourly Once, Daily Once, Weekly Once, Other Once and so on. What I mean is the 'Hourly', 'Daily', 'Weekly' and 'Other' will still maintain what they have now but add an option of 'Once' to them. 3) For what inoketi wants, it is simply Run macro 'Other' every 18*60+5 minutes 0 seconds ONCE I know it is hard to convince the author of ME to do the above changes, any way I will keep trying (This is my 4th trial) t.s.lim

Hi kevin, Thanks for the explanation, I now know the work of this hooking process and I can now reason out why it is impossible to TEST TYPE a Win Hotkey to an application who don't support window controls and does not allow user defined hotkey on it own.

Hi, But for the case of Alt-Space, as discussed in the other thread, it obviously is something window wants, but ME gets it (if I set the ME macro hotkey as Alt-Space). I do not know how true is this: "When a key is pressed, it is passed to Windows, passed to Macro Express, Macro Express passes it back to Windows and Windows passes it to the application" or should there be an exception, because Alt-Space suppose to be something Windows wants, but it ends up in ME. So if what you quote: "What Windows wants, Windows gets" is always true, than a ME macro with a hotkey like Alt+Space will never get activated I am not clear with the inner work of "Windows Hooks". But if a ME macro works with a hotkey Alt-Space there could be only 2 possibilities: 1) ME sieze it from Windows 2) Window wants it (as a windows hotkey)but will give to any application who wants if there is one. But from my test, if there is a ME macro with Alt-Space as its hotkey, the macro is activated instead of the "Properties menu" for active application being pop up. That shows either case 1) or 2) is ture. But then when I TEXT TYPE again Alt-Space from within the same macro, the "Properties menu" is up for active application. This time window takes it. I am really at a loss...??

Hi, But window won't give keystorke to running program (with focus) if the keystroke is a win hotkey. So, ME should decide who to give (in term of window or program) not Windows. t.s.lim

Hi, What about application that does not has windows controls? For example if I were to text type to a console program that runs from a DOS box.

Hi Kevin, Thanks for your suggestion! Even though it does not directly solve my problem, but I get an inspiration from you and I come up with a solution. First, in application ABC, I assign such that another Keystroke say Ctl+Shift+Y for the action I want, then I use ME to intercept Alt-Space and TEXT TYPE the Ctl+Shift+Y. Ha, ha, now whenever ABC is running and Alt-Space is pressed, ABC will do what I want Again, thanks for your help!

Hi, I would like to suggest such that TEXT TYPE command can be specific about who is the receiver. I.e. when "Text Type"ing keystroke, we can specify in the command who will be the prefered receiver. It can be a running window/program or O/S itself. Among the benefit of this "receiver specific" are 1) I can overwrite window hotkey (Please see my the other thread "Can ME overwrite WinXp Shortcut key") 2) If more than one running programs are competing for the same keystrokes, I can use ME to decide who will receive it. t.s.lim

Hi, I wish I can set the scope to "Global except" where WinXP will be the one exception ... May be I should make a suggestion to this scope setting...

HI, I have tried and has scope Alt-space to ABC. The text type Alt-Space from the macro pop the properties menu... Ah, I am hopeless...

Hi kevin, But what I want is such that ABC will receive the keystroke "Alt-Space" not other keystroke combination. i.e. I want Alt-Sapce being received by ABC instead of being intercept by window to pop the properties menu for ABC... Well what happen if I TEXT TYPE again Alt-Space?? Isn't that a nested call to the same macro?

HI, WinXP uses Alt-Tab to cycle through running applications, Alt-Space for poping up properties menu and so on. While many applications are running under WinXP, say active/current application is ABC, I wish that when I press Alt-Space instead of poping the properties menu for ABC, the Alt-Space is passed as normal keystroke to ABC. Can ME help in this case? t.s.lim

"The Macro Express scheduler is what it is" But not enough! I am concern about system resource (taken up by various scheduling agents) and the ease of macro maintenance. Since I 've ME run on my system, I want it to take care of as many scheduling things as possible. Even when some applications offer their own scheduler, still I let ME take over, this means instead of having many scheduling agents running all over my system (or at least run once during system bootup), I have only 1, that is ME. For this, ME scheduling feature has to be powerful and offer lot more things than what it has now. "Nicolas and Icebox gave you a couple of suggestions to try, which involved generating a controlled temporary file" Sure, it works, but why don't add what I suggest to ME? It makes the creation of such scheduling macro easier and since the macro become simpler, it is easier to maintain. (imagine I 've few dozen of events to be scheduled in the "only once" way, how helpful and easy if ME has what I have suggested) In fact, it is a matter how important the developer of ME think about this scheduling feature. IMO, it is a good feature to add and a good selling point to attract new users... t.s.lim

"During my evaluation of the product I have problem to create a macro such that it can be scheduled to run as below: Once a month (the very first boot up of my PC in a month), no matter what day and time on startup of my PC? Simple conditional right, but how to set this macro "schedule" property. The fact is: 1) I can never sure what day in a month is my first day I will switch on my PC 2) And I never know what the time range I will do the above 3) All I want is to schedule the macro to run on 1st PC boot up of a month. But how? This kind of simple schedule activation is handy for the below cases (and probably many more): I plan to schedule a reminder for a) Backup data early of the month Optimize my registry once every two months c) Say I love you to my girl friend at least once at the beginning of every week So you see a lot of good things can be scheduled From the above, I strongly suggest you to revise the schedule page to make it actually better than MS ScheduleAgent. T.S.LIM" I have sent the above 3 years ago and in the reply someone from Insight was telling me they 've plan to review the scheduling part. Now 3 years has passed since my registration, I am still waiting to see something done for the above... t.s.lim

Sorry for this late reply, I was a bit busy for the pass few days... Thanks Nicolas and Icebox for your suggestion! I was thinking of using a temp file to do the trick before I post... Anyway, I strongly urge the author of ME to enhance the ME ability in the scheduling area. Especially to allow scheduling a macro to run "Once" within a duration of time/date (not a prticular point of time), better still if there is function to quickly write, retrieve, update and remove a counter/variable value to a file or registry (which is hidden from user, mantained by ME itself). This shall make life much easier! t.s.lim

Many times, I need to schedule the run of a macro in MacroExpress 3.5b in a way similar to the below scenerio: Monthly clean up of prefetch folder. Weekly backup using a backup program. But I can't seem to correctly schedule the above using ME. I don't switch on my PC 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. So scheduling a macro to be executed exactly at particular time (say 7 a.m.) is not practical (I don't know what day in a month and what time in a day) I might turn ON my PC. (But I am sitting in front of my PC almost every day for at least 8 hours) What I wish is to run something once in a month or week (if I haven't done so). I don't see any way I can schedule that with ME? Any suggestion? t.s.lim