WIN + X, WIN + A as Hotkey (sometimes working)

[Alexis]

I prefer simple hotkeys which i can easliy access with the left hand as you never know when your right one is busy moving the mouse! WIN + X and WIN + A are those.

 

The strange thing about those 2 hotkeys is that on one pc those are working perfectly while on another machine those are simply ignored and nothing happens. If you for example press them in the New Macro / Assign Hotkey - Menu the entry stays blank.

 

Win 7, 64 Bit is used on both!

 

Thank You

Alexandra

[redwards]

On Microsoft's website, it lists the Windows Logo+A: Starts Accessibility Options (if installed)

[Alexis]

As i said nothing happens pressing WIN + A.
Maybe the site provides infos that could help. Could you give us the link?

 

Thank You

Alexandra

[Cory]

I can't take the time ATM to look it up but W7 uses a lot more hotkeys than previous versions. But Win+X has been around since XP at least. But it's a mobility/accessibility thingy. You might check out this page. on how to disable them if you're not disabled yourself;-)

[Alexis]

This is amazing Cory!

 

Just with this litte Reg.-Tweak all those combinations like (Win, Win+Ctrl, Win+Alt) + Keys and Numbers are now free again providing lots of ergonomic hotkeys for activating macros.

 

I can only recommend deactivating those Default - Winkeyfunctions especially if you don´t use them!

 

Thank You very much!

Alexandra

[Cory]

My pleasure

[Alexis]

Strangly, on the one pc MEX is still non-reactive to WIN + X, A. So i guess there must be something else involved.

 

Thank You

Alexandra

[Cory]

I rather gave up on the concept of having a hotkey for every macro. Like you I found that is was a constant dance around used hotkeys. Like dating in your 40's all the good ones are taken. Mostly I would use the number keypad since none of those seemed to be used and that worked well. However not all computers have this and again it's a problem. As many as I could I moved to shortkeys which have the benefit of not stepping on existing hotkeys and a practically limitless quantity that can have meaningful text to help me remember. EG "degreess" makes the degree symbol (º) for me. But the limitation here is it needs a place for one to type. For most of the rest I made a popup menu with accelerator keys.

[paul]

Like dating in your 40's all the good ones are taken.

Sounds like you're talking from experience!

BTW, is it just me or does anyone else find it quite difficult to quote a previous message and successfully edit that response? I often see the name of the author disappear and all the quotation formatting too. I usually end up making several attempts to quote the message before I'm successful.

For example, if you look carefully, you'll see that the single sentence quote from Cory is preceded by a space. Without that manually inserted space, all the formatting disappears.

[Alexis]

Thanks Cory,

 

i do have my workarounds too when it comes to accessing loads of macros ergonomically.

 

E.G i assign them to CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + Letter. Not ergonomic? Wait!

Then i have a macro (ALT + X) which presses CTRL + SHIFT + ALT DOWN, shows a keyboardmap with all macros assigned to such modifyers and waits for a keypress. After i typed that key (without any modifyer) it presses CTRL + SHIFT + ALT UP and let vanish the keyboardmap. As you already guessed the regarding macro with that complex shortkey is then activated.

 

So i type an ergonomic hotkey and let then the activation macro run the desired macro by pressing one key.

 

Although i´m doing fine it disturbs me that two pc´s (same age, same operating system) are behaving differently when it comes to recognizing keycombinations with the WIN-Key.

 

Thank You

Alexandra

[Alexis]

I go nuts!

After installing plenty of window updates and restarting now the shortcuts are working identically on both machines. No idea what made the difference!?!

 

I feel bad about causing all that fuss!

But Cory´s registry-tweak was definetly worth it.

 

Thank You

Alexandra

[acantor]

 

As many as I could I moved to shortkeys which have the benefit of not

stepping on existing hotkeys and a practically limitless quantity that

can have meaningful text to help me remember. EG "degreess" makes the

degree symbol (º) for me. But the limitation here is it needs a place

for one to type.

 

 

 

One of the things I like about ShortKeys is that there is no need to type the codes into fields. You can type into thin air, the "aether" as it were. As long as the scope is set appropriately, the Shortkey will activate whether or not you see the codes as they are being typed. It's a bit paradoxical and counter intuitive, but it works!

 

However, there can be side-effects of ShortKeys, since by default, Macro Express sends a backspace for each character of the code. For example, typing "degreess<space> causes the backspace key to be pressed nine times. In some contexts, pressing backspace might have an unexpected consequence. In most Web browsers, pressing backspace (when a field is not focused) is the equivalent of clicking the "Back" button.

 

However, In Firefox, it is easy to disable this feature, which opens up the possibility of using Shortkeys without inadvertently going "back" to previously visited pages.