A (Partial) List of Jack’s Miscellaneous AutoHotkey Tips and Tricks

Note: While this page includes many blogs which now appear in the book Jack’s Motley Assortment of AutoHotkey Tips, only the book includes a complete list as of the day of publication—plus many other AutoHotkey tricks no longer available on the Web.

I realized that within a couple of weeks of posting, many of my AutoHotkey tips may fade into obscurity. Unless you know exactly where to look in this blog, you may not know that some of these tidbits even exist. I started compiling this list to make it a little easier to peruse the various topics and decide which might be of interest to you.

This collection only includes some of those AutoHotkey techniques discussed in Jack’s AutoHotkey Blog (and for the most part they don’t appear in other “AutoHotkey Topics and Series” compilations on this site). Many other tips disappeared from the Web when I took down the main ComputorEdge Magazine site. (I didn’t want to do it, but circumstances forced the change.) You can find many of those other techniques in the AutoHotkey books available at ComputorEdge E-Books and even more no-longer-published tips in the new book A Motley Assortment of AutoHotkey Tips. (The major advantage to using the e-books lies in their organization and searchable indexes.)

You might find some of these AutoHotkey pointers surprising while others serve to clarify how specific techniques work:

• July 29, 2015, Writing AutoHotkey Functions to Make Life Easier “A Question about AutoHotkey Functions”
• August 4, 2015, Changing Mouse Cursor Speed with AutoHotkey API Calls: “Slowing Down Mouse Cursor Movement”
• January 18, 2016, An AutoHotkey “Duh!” Moment “Disabling Unwanted Hotstrings”
• June 9, 2016, AutoHotkey Solutions for Windows Clipboard Limitations (AutoHotkey Clipboard Tips) “Sometimes It’s Just Easier To Set Up a Temporary Hotkey for Inserting Text in Documents, Web Pages, or Forms, Plus a Quick Reminder of a Couple of Cool Clipboard-like AutoHotkey Apps (ClipJump and PhraseOMatic)”
• July 8, 2016, Force a Window Always-On-Top with WinSet (Beginning AutoHotkey Tip) “While Not an Everyday Trick, Making a Window Always-On-Top with the AutoHotkey WinSet Command Comes in Handy”
• July 13, 2016, Make a Window Transparent with the WinSet Command (Beginning AutoHotkey Tip) “When Setting a Window to Always-On-Top Make It See-through for Peeking Underneath”
• July 22, 2016, The WinSet, ExStyle Command for Mouse-Click Transparent Windows (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “After Always-On-Top and Translucent Windows, Use the WinSet Command to Make a Mouse-Click Transparent Help Window, Plus a Discussion of the Mysterious (and Confusing) Microsoft Window Styles/ExStyles (WS_XXX and WS_EX_XXX)”
• July 28, 2016, WinSet, TransColor Command for Onscreen Data (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “The WinSet, TransColor Option Offers an Alternative Method for Placing Data and/or Images Onscreen and On Top without Interfering with Your Work”
• August 4, 2016, Change Window Shapes Using the WinSet, Region Command (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “Make Odd Shaped Windows with the AutoHotkey WinSet, Region Command, Plus a Script for Creating a Mouse Spotlight”
• August 13, 2016,  Peek Inside Windows Clipboard (Beginning AutoHotkey Tip) “A Quick, Easy Way to View Windows Clipboard Contents”
• August 21, 2016, Peek Inside Windows Clipboard, Part 2 (Intermediate AutoHotkey OnClipboardChange Tip) “An AutoHotkey OnClipboardChange Script for Running the Most Appropriate of Two Different Clipboard Peeking Apps”
• September 22, 2016, Fixing Grammar Problems with Google Search (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “The GooglePhraseFix AutoHotkey Script Corrects Many Common Spelling and Grammar Errors While Demonstrating How to Download Information from the Web…Without Opening a Browser”
• October 7, 2016, Adding Actions to Windows System Tray Icon Menu (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “Adding Hard-to-Remember Hotkeys to the AutoHotkey System Tray Icon Makes Sense—Plus, How to Best Activate the Last Window”
• October 14, 2016, Make Instant Web Page Searches Your Online Thesaurus (Intermediate AutoHotkey Tip) “Expand Your Vocabulary with This Quick and Dirty AutoHotkey Tip Or Modify This Script for Any Web Page Search”
• October 30, 2016, The Problem with Accessing Web Data with AutoHotkey Scripts “The Trouble with Scripts Which Use Web Page Information, Plus AutoHotkey Tools for Downloading Web Page Source Code”
• January 23, 2017, Tips for Optimizing the Standard AutoHotkey Message Box (MsgBox) Command “AutoHotkey MsgBox Tricks for Adding Power and Flexibility to Your Scripts. If You Want a Simple, Quick Way to Display Data and Execute Action, You’ll Love These Techniques!”
• February 7, 2017, For Speed, Replace the Send Command with Control, EditPaste (AutoHotkey Tip) “The Control, EditPaste Command Adds Great Speed to Standard Text Insertion Routines—within Certain Limits”
• February 21, 2017, Change Script Features on the Fly with the Windows System Tray Icon Context Menu (AutoHotkey Tip) “Dynamically Switch the Actions of a Running AutoHotkey Script with a Simple Click of a System Tray Right-Click Menu Item”
•  March 3, 2017, Understanding Label Names and Subroutines (Beginning AutoHotkey Tip) “Once You Know How AutoHotkey Label Names Work, You Can Add More Tricks to Your Bag of AutoHotkey Skills”
•  March 10, 2017, Printing with AutoHotkey Made Simple (AutoHotkey Tip) “While Other Techniques Exist for Printing Directly from AutoHotkey, Make It Easy by Using Print Drivers from Other Programs”
•  March 26, 2017, GoTo Command Versus GoSub Command (AutoHotkey Tip) “While the Online Documentation Advises Avoiding the AutoHotkey GoTo Command in Deference to GoSub or a User-Defined Function, You’ll Find Times When GoTo Works Best!”
•  April 6, 2017, Create a Universal MsgBox Print Function with ControlGetText (AutoHotkey Tip) “When Nothing Else Works for Copying Text, Try the ControlGetText Command and Create a Global MsgBox Print Function”
•  April 14, 2017, Stuffing More into AutoHotkey Pop-up Menus (AutoHotkey Tip) “Rather Than Increasing the Length of a System Tray Menu, Add Submenus—Plus, How to Use Menu Names (A_ThisMenu) for Conditional Actions”
• May 4, 2017, Stop Accidental Deletions with the BlockInput Command (AutoHotkey Tip—Part One) “Ever Wonder Why You Might Want to Block Keyboard and Mouse Input? Here’s One Reason to Use the BlockInput AutoHotkey Command, Plus the Associated Problems”
• May 8, 2017, Stop Accidental Deletions with the BlockInput Command (AutoHotkey Tip—Part Two) “AutoHotkey BlockInput Command May Cause Stuck Keys! Fix It with the KeyWait Command.”
• May 12, 2017, Understanding AutoHotkey %Var% Variable Text Replacement (AutoHotkey Tip) “Handy Window Transparency Wheel Using Macro Replacement Quickly Peeks Under a Window without Moving It, Plus the Difference Between % Var and %Var% Made Easy”
• May 17, 2017, Reset Hotkeys with Label Name Drop-Through Behavior (AutoHotkey Tip) “Sometimes Not Encapsulating Hotkeys with the Return Command Serves a Purpose”
• May 27, 2017, Check Window Status with WinGet, ExStyle (AutoHotkey Tip) “ExStyle Settings Help to Polish AutoHotkey Window Manipulation Scripts, Plus a Couple of Tricks”

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Like anybody else, I have expenses and a need to make ends meet. As “Jack’s AutoHotkey Blog” increases in popularity, coding the test scripts and writing the blogs takes up more of my time. That means I’ve less time to pursue other income-earning opportunities. I don’t plan to ever move “Jack’s AutoHotkey Blog” behind a paywall, but if you think my efforts are worth a bit of your hard-earned cash, then you can offer a token of your appreciation by purchasing some of my AutoHotkey books. You may not need the references yourself, but you might know someone who can benefit from one or two of them.

Thank you,