Thinkpads Forum

I've been using a utility ever since the early days of Windows 95 that does a lot of automation stuff including sending keystrokes to the current application. The name of this is Clickflick, and when I first got it there were two versions: a 16 bit and a 32 bit version. Although there seemed to be less bugs in the 16 bit version, I eventually had to give up using it when I found it didn't work with the newer versions of Windows. So, I now use the 32 bit version.
There are bugs but I've always developed workarounds.

Until I got my new T60 recently, I've used it lately on Windows 2000 desktops running IE 6.

For some reason, macros I use with this utility that send keystrokes don't work on the T60 in IE 7. I figure it might be an IE 7 issue or possibly my XP Pro. The same macros work OK in my other applications, at least the ones I've tested it on. Does anyone have an idea what might be going on here? Thanks!

PS Am I apt to find that this utility is completely unusable with a 64 bit OS?

PPS The list of thread titles on this forum has on the left side of some posts a right-pointing arrow pointing at an icon of a sheet of paper. What is the significance of that?

Muse wrote:PPS The list of thread titles on this forum has on the left side of some posts a right-pointing arrow pointing at an icon of a sheet of paper. What is the significance of that?

That basically is an indication of threads that have been updated since your last visit.

Sorry I can't answer any of your other questions, but I had used a program similar to what you have (can't remember the name at the moment). I believe it keyed off the title of the running window as a way of insuring it sent the programmed keystrokes to the correct application. I would contact the developers of your program to see if they know about the problem and/or have a workaround.

rkawakami wrote:

Muse wrote:PPS The list of thread titles on this forum has on the left side of some posts a right-pointing arrow pointing at an icon of a sheet of paper. What is the significance of that?

That basically is an indication of threads that have been updated since your last visit.

Sorry I can't answer any of your other questions, but I had used a program similar to what you have (can't remember the name at the moment). I believe it keyed off the title of the running window as a way of insuring it sent the programmed keystrokes to the correct application. I would contact the developers of your program to see if they know about the problem and/or have a workaround.

Ah, the fact of the matter is that the program has apparently long ago dropped out of development and support. I sent an email to the owner of the company that developed and marketed it and got no reply some years ago. All my google searches on it are fruitless and it appears that noone is using it but me. However, I think that inconceivable because it's so darn useful. Maybe I can figure out another workaround - maybe reverting to IE6, or some configuration option within the program. I can test the IE6 vs. IE7 theory by upgrading to IE7 on my desktop and see if the utility works or not. If it doesn't, I'll uninstall IE7 and reinstall IE6.

Found the keystroke utility that I used a number of years ago...

It's a program called Keyboard Express 2000. That link is to the homepage which I'm surprised still is active. I last used it on a Windows 95 machine here at work. I've never tried using the program on anything more modern than Win98SE. You can assign a particular "hot key" using almost any combination of ALT, CTRL, SHIFT and regular keyboard keys. Each hot key can be associated with a particular window "name" or left as a global option.

I searched for ClickFlick and found that the company, Miratech, was based in Palo Alto, CA, only a couple of miles from here. A review by WinMag from 1995 and some other "ancient" references was all that I turned up using Google. KE2K may work for you if all you need it to do is sent pre-programmed keystroke sequences.

Yes, it was Miratech and the owner (president) was Ike van Cruyningen and he was in Palo Alto. I belonged to a computer club that met monthly in Berkeley and we'd usually have a presentation. One month the presentation was done by Ike van Cruyningen demonstrating ClickFlick. ClickFlick had begun as a custom application written for the financial industry back east (probably Wall Street). At some point they decided to adapt it to become a commercial product. They gave away one copy of the program to the lucky door prize winner and that winner was me! A couple of members bought a copy. I don't know about them, but I really got into the program. I communicated with Ike and he sent me the 32 bit version when it was available and I believe he sent me one upgraded version. After that, to my knowledge, nothing was done with it. There were a number of bugs and I really hoped I could get a more recent version and I suspect that it exists but I was unable to find anything or find anyone on the planet who was interested. I did Google searches, Google Groups searches and came up with next to nothing. Yes, I saw a few reviews from around 10-12 years ago. I think there was one in PC Magazine or PC World or maybe both.

Sending keystrokes is only part of what Clickflick is about. It also launches applications and specific documents of applications. It uses a pretty generic version of Visual Basic to write macro scripts that can be run automatically. For example, I wrote a couple that capitalize a highlighted string of text or make the string lower case. I wrote a macro to insert today's date. I know next to nothing about Visual Basic, but if I did I could probably write some amazing macros to be used via ClickFlick.

I launch Clickflick from my startup folder, so it's always running in the background. At the press of a customizable keyboard or keyboard and mouse combination a "popbox" is made visible at the mouse cursor. This consists of a combination of buttons that you have predetermined. Each button does a prearranged task. They have icons of your choice and labels that you choose. As written, each application that is in the foreground when you call up a Clickflick popbox brings up its own popbox with its own buttons. Since going to Windows 2000 I've been unable to get other than the basic generic "Desktop" popbox to appear, but no matter, that's still great and I've lived with that shortcoming. There may be a workaround, but I haven't found it. It's primarily because of that problem that I last tried to get an update for the program, unsuccessfully as I say. In any case, you can add any number of buttons to a popbox, including the Desktop popbox, and you can move them to any position in the popbox that suits you. My current Desktop popbox has 6 rows of 9 buttons. The moment you select a button (and therefore its action) the popbox again disappears from view. It's really a very fun utility.

Thanks for that link to Keyboard Express. They have a more powerful version, being Macro Express. The have a comparison page and I'm looking them over.

Here's a picture of my Desktop Clickflick popbox:

http://fox302.com/index.pl?s=vf&user=Mu ... icflic.jpg

I think the last two posts in this thread probably point to the solution to my problem using ClickFlick on my T60:

http://pgmacros.com/community/index.php?showtopic=1655

I'm going to give that a try!

Edit: Well, let's give it a try...

Well, I don't see that setting. Still have a hunch I won't have the problem if I'm running IE 6.

Muse wrote:Here's a picture of my Desktop Clickflick popbox:

I use the freeware utility autohotkey, it can do all sorts of neat stuff...

http://www.autohotkey.com/

regards,
jesper james