June 30th, 2022

Howdy %Name%,

A mother was talking to her son in the morning. Her son was saying he didn’t want to go to school. That nobody likes him, and that all the kids make fun of him. To which she responded “Well you have to go to school today, you’re not sick. You have no excuse. Besides you’re the principal! 🤣

While I find this joke hilarious, the point is we all have things we don’t want to do. Learning something new is “work” but typically well worth the payoff! I made our AutoHotkey courses to provide a clear path to learning AutoHotkey.

Working with something new can feel very uncomfortable! Our courses can help ease the pain and get you to an AutoHotkey Rockstar in no-time!

Now on with the show…

Avoid losing data when working on files in the cloud ☁

Years ago Maestrith and I realized that, when working under DropBox and using file append in a fast loop we could end up losing data because DropBox was locking the file. Thankfully this was very rare as you had to be really spamming your hard drive. Sadly Isaias and I experienced something similar the other day so we thought we’d document a “best practices” for when working with files that are being auto-synced to the cloud. With the FIleObect you can lock the file so other tools can’t take control of it. It’s more complex than FileAppend however it has other benefits as well. One being, if you’re working in a large file, you can automatically jump to specific coordinates in it.

Automating a game on a Discord Server with my Son

My son, Jon, is 15 and spends a ridiculous amount of time on his Xbox and Meta Quest. He’s also been getting into games on a Discord server so I mentioned we could automate some of what he’s doing. Granted, in this video I was taking the “worst” approach to automation by just sending keystrokes however I was trying to show my son just how easy it can be. Have y’all tried to get your kids into automation? Or been even braver and get your spouse❓

Creating a Responsive GUI

I was on a call with André from Brazil and he had an issue with a GUI that wasn’t updating / being responsive. Years ago I’d used a few scripts to help with this but I asked Isaias to help explain what is going on and how to create a responsive GUI in AutoHotkey. If you’d like a simple resizable edit control you can get the code here. If you’re new to GUIs, you might want to take our amazing GUIs are Easy course! The course is AMAZING!👏

Functional / Procedural vs. Object oriented languages

Not being a programmer I’m often “lost” when I read articles written for programmers. One topic that often comes up is a discussion between “Functional or Object Oriented”. I asked Isaias to help explain the difference between the two. Do you have a topic you’d like explained? Let us know⁉

Understanding Email severs, Protocol and Sending emails

I have a couple of different scripts I use for sending emails with AutoHotkey. While I understand there are specific settings to configure I never gave much thought to what was behind them. In this video we discuss many of these settings, what they mean and why they exist.

Discussing email servers, protocol and sending emails

Simple Arrays in 🅰utoHotkey

Years ago I made this video to help explain how to work with arrays in AutoHotkey. Arrays are super useful to a programmer and understanding how to access them is really beneficial to you! I do go deeper into Arrays in the Intermediate AHK course.

How to work with Simple Arrays in AutoHotKey | It’s easier than you’d think!

🔥UI Automation🔥- The most amazing thing for AHK since sliced bread! 🍞

In case you missed them we’ve done two videos on using Microsoft’s UIA technology. This is a giant step forward for using AutoHotkey to automate programs

Intro video discussing the new Forum post and how to get Inspect.exe from Microsoft

How to easily automate nearly any program with the UI Automation API

Second video walking through how to connect to elements that don’t have a name

Automating a program where your element doesn’t have a name with UI Automation and AutoHotkey

The-Automators’ Podcast

#149: Your script needs to be more than just a better “mouse trap”
#148: Is your optimization warranted
#147: What is AutoHotkey’s Unique Selling Proposition?

📚 What we’re reading

Amazon Is Giving Away 💲10 Store Credit: Here’s How to Get It (really easy if you’re a prime member!)
How to Unfollow Someone on Facebook without them knowing it (almost required in today’s crazy world)
How to Find the Cheapest Gas ⛽ With Google Maps

AHK Hero?

Want more time than the Friday free hour? Have content that you can’t have on YouTube? Consider joining the 🦸‍♀️AHK Hero club! Members receive big discounts to courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.
They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and a 2nd “office hours” session which isn’t on YouTube.

👨‍🏫 AutoHotkey GURU Interview: Jethrow

I got a very solid understanding of the DOM by reading (and re-reading) Jethrow’s Web Scraping post (it’s still bookmarked on my Start page). I reached out to Jethrow and he declined to be interviewed however he did answer some questions which I read in this video. If you’re new to web scraping you can see webinars and videos here

Examples of AutoHotkey |AutoHotkey Experts: Jethrow

⚡️Productivity tips

It might seem counter-intuitve to take breaks however, having a solid break from your work, ensures you
keep your energy level’s up and be productive.

🤣 A spot of Humor

Roll-up the sleeves, shut off all distractions and learn something new today!

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

What you plant now, you will harvest later. — Og Mandino
Do the hard jobs first. Easy jobs will take care of themselves. — Dale Camegie
Effective performance is preceded by painstaking preparation. — Brian Tracy
Be where you said you’d be, when you said you’d be there, ready to do what you said you’d do. — John Carlton

Live AutoHotkey Support Tomorrow

Don’t forget on Friday’s you can get free AutoHotkey support on my YouTube channel. Or you can sign up for reminders and join the zoom room.

AHKCon

Have you watched our initial video on AHKCon? Are you signed up to get notifications? You can always go here to see if there is news on the event.

The-Automator

Joe, Isaias, and staff

P.S. Special thanks to the following for purchasing 🦸‍♀️AHK hero membership:
Rodrigo C., Nathan N., Michael C., Miral P., Rune O., Thomas D., Tyler F., Guy M., Thomas K., Dale W., and Robert R.

and for these people purchaseing multiple Udemy courses

Double P.S. Special thanks to the following for purchasing multiple AutoHotkey Udemy courses this month!

5 Jesus a.
3 Ron o.
3 Rodrigo a.
3 Juan z.
3 John y.
3 Henrique a.
3 Dimas o.
2 Trevor n.
2 Shawn e.
2 Robert d.
2 Rennie d.
2 Pamela a.
2 Michael n.
2 Joey o.
2 Chui H.
2 Allen n.
2 Alexander v.
2 Aakriti

Triple P.S. a customer reached out a while back. He was in the Intermediate AutoHotkey course but weren’t sure if they were ready for the Intermediate Objects course. I mentioned the Intermediate Objects course does cover basics of Objects but the Objects course goes way, way beyond that. The dilemma was that the Objects course was on sale for ½ off but he wasn’t ready for it yet. I told him not to “sweat it” and to go ahead and finish-up the Intermediate AHK course. If/when he wanted to buy the Objects course I’d create a coupon to allow him to buy it at the sale price. Well today he said he was ready to move forward so I created a coupon dropping the price from $99 to 💲49. Since I was there I decided to create a few extra for y’all. I saw he used the 1^st coupon but there are 3 still available. If you’re on the fence about buying it, now is a great time… The coupon code is: “cd50PERCENT” and needs to be used during checkout.

June 16, 2022

Howdy %Name%,

The more I collaborate with people, the more I realize just how helpful & powerful it is! I’ve been saying this for a long time but ya’ll need an AHK coding buddy! And not just for debugging purposes, being able to bounce ideas off each other is a huge win for everyone involved. Google is very helpful however it only helps you go down a specific “rabbit hole”. When we talk with others, they provide ideas outside our own which can be invaluable!

So find someone you can bounce ideas off of. They don’t have to be a programmer (but it would help if they were). The main point is to have someone you have both regular chats with and can go to when you’re trying to decide on a new direction or stuck debugging something. Trust me, it will be worth it!

Now on with the show…

🆕Object Oriented Course

Hopefully you’ve taken advantage of our sale price (ends 6/18)on the Intermediate Objects course. Object Oriented Programming sounds “scary” to non-programmers however, in reality, it actually simplifies your code.

We just released this video discussing Inheritance which is one benefit of OOP. Inheritance can help you design better structured/organized code. It’s not an overly complex topic but would be impossible without classes.

🆚Code & GIT

Do you work with others? Do you release versions of your code? If either of the previous statements are true, you really should take a serious look at VS code. In this video Isaias talks with Spawnova about the many benefits of using VS code. If you’re new to VS code, you can check out this webinar we did on it.

Personally I still use AHK Studio and recommend SciTE4AutoHotkey to people new to programming. Don’t forget we have a great tool for swapping your default AHK editors.

Uploading files and clicking buttons with Rufaydium

Have you played with Rufaydium yet? In this video Xeo786 shows us how we can upload files in Chrome using Rufaydium with AutoHotkey. Automating browsers is an amazing skillset to have. If you’re new to Web Scraping you can check out this AutoHotkey webinar where we discuss the basics.

Stop losing your $hit 🙄

Technology can be an amazing help! My wife is constantly forgetting where she put her: keys, phone, purse,🧠, etc. A Bluetooth tracker can be a great way to find what’s missing! Currently these TileMate trackers (affiliate link) are on sale for 💲16.99. Not exactly cheap but they make a great gift! They’re also a great “insurance plan” to put in something you think might get stolen or go missing. Don’t forget Father’s day is just around the corner…