"THE GREATEST MEX3 FUNCTIONALITY EVER"

[Alexis]

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

[floyd]

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.

1) It is how Windows works and has nothing to do with Macro Express.

2) Sure you can. Once created, a floating menu is activated and deactivated via the Enable and Disable commands. Create a macro that fires whenever a target widow gains focus. Place enabling and disabling commands within If/EndIf constructs to enable or disable the appropriate floating menu(s) for each focused window.

3) Yes you can. See 2) above.

4) Why not? You can certainly have more than a single floating menu running at once, and they are infinitely arrangeable.

[Alexis]

First of all thank you very much for answering.

 

1) It is how Windows works and has nothing to do with Macro Express.

 

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.

[floyd]

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.

The minimize, restore, and maximize icons on window titlebars are treated differently by the operating system, as is the titlebar itself. They will become active by hovering (and therefore the hint appears) even if the client portion of the window remains inactive. Without doing so, we would have no way to close a window using a mouse.

 

Toolbar icons, on the other hand, don't become active unless the client window becomes active, so no hints appear when hovering.

 

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.

Maybe others are experiencing inconsistencies the same as you are, but since I am not, I really don't have an answer for you.

 

I will say that hints are handled by Windows via messaging. When you want to enable hints for an object, you have your program send an API call to windows saying "I want hint "XXX" to display when the user hovers over this object." But that's it. There is no way to tell windows how long to delay displaying the hint or how long to leave it displayed, or how long a mouse has to unhover before hovering again to redisplay the hint.

 

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.

Not sure what you mean by "press escape", however, the rest reads as if you have a macro scoped to run only if a certain program has focus (Run If On Top is checked). If so, you are correct: since the toolbar has focus, the target program does not, and therefore it will not fire.

 

Otherwise, if you only care that a particular program is running before a macro fires, you could uncheck the box and change the target macro to activate its window before it does anything else.

 

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?

Windows sends keystrokes to the active window. In this case, the toolbar wasn't active but your application was.