AKT Developments

Hi I'm an IT Professional, my particular field of expertise is application development and windows scripts. My website has loads of information on what technologies I use in solution developments and the areas I specialise in.

[aktdev]

AutoHotKey, Simply Awesome

AutoHotKey is a great program that allows awesome power at the press of a few buttons. This powerful little program allows you to set your own shortcut keys through simple scripts. If you can script it you can make it a shortcut!

AutoHotKey is an amazing program! I really can't go on about it enough. The last update release was October 2010 but this program has most (if not all) of the functionality you could ever really want, and the website is still quite active with many people sharing great tips, scripts and fully fledged executables. The power of Autohotkey is based in it's simplicity. You make a script, assign it a keystroke combination and BAM, your script can now be launched everytime you press that key combination. There is even the ability to create GUIs for your scripts, moving them from scripts to full programs.

More details and examples here

[aktdev]

AutoHotKey, Simply Awesome

AutoHotKey is a great program that allows awesome power at the press of a few buttons. This powerful little program allows you to set your own shortcut keys through simple scripts. If you can script it you can make it a shortcut!

AutoHotKey is an amazing program! I really can't go on about it enough. The last update release was October 2010 but this program has most (if not all) of the functionality you could ever really want, and the website is still quite active with many people sharing great tips, scripts and fully fledged executables. The power of Autohotkey is based in it's simplicity. You make a script, assign it a keystroke combination and BAM, your script can now be launched everytime you press that key combination. There is even the ability to create GUIs for your scripts, moving them from scripts to full programs.

More details and examples here

[aktdev]

Shortcut Creation Using Vbscript

Full Script Available at AKT Developments

  One of the best uses of windows scripts is for installation and login scripts. Being able to dynamically create shortcuts on the fly, based on who is logged in or on what machine, etc. allows a system administrator to easily manage their systems and to provide usability directly to the user. This article will cover some of the basics of scripting and show how easy it is to create a shortcut via windows scripting, utilising the vbscript language.

This script was written to aid in making manula installations easier and assumes that the files are already on the machine, but could be easily adapted for making a installation script that automatically adds the shortcut at the end of the installation.

  Firstly we need to create a new shell object so that we can interact with the windows operating system and give windows commands to complete.

  Next we create two string values and assign them the input from a user dialog. The 'Inputbox' command shows the user a dialog box which has a text box that the user can fill in. The two values seperated by a comma are the 'message' the user sees in the dialog box, and the 'title' of the dialog box respectively.

Line 6 is getting the 'windows special folder' path of the 'all users desktop' folder. We could put in the direct path (usually something like "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\") as a string but if windows is not installed on C: drive or your using windows seven and windows xp installation your script is either going to put the file somewhere obscure or not be able to write the file and crash. So using windows to find the file path is alot easier to maintain and works better on more systems, and also makes you script usable on future versions of windows.

  Next is the actual creation of the shortcut. 

  And the shortcut is created!

We can now send a message to the user telling them the shortcut is created and quit the script, or if the script is part of an installation we could continue with other processes.

For a text file and/or vbs file of this script, or to look for more handy windows scripts, head over to my website

[aktdev]

Yet more Squidoo!!

Another lens has been added to AKT Dev's Squidoo lenses

Read it here!

  And catch more info here

[aktdev]

Script Basics & Notepad++

  One of the hardest things about script creation, and possibly the reason why many people don't do any scripting, is that the syntax needs to strictly be adhered to. Syntax is the structure or 'grammar' of the code. If you have ever done any programming you will know how important, and often frustrating, syntax can be. The language with the easiest syntax to handle,in my opinion, would be Microsoft's VBScript which compared to most programming and scripting languages is quite forgiving and is what most of my windows scripts are written in anyway. The biggest advantage of VBScript, is that it has native access to many windows operating processes (being a Microsoft product it would want to), and to the WMI. VBScripts are also completely transparent and don't show the user any windows, forms, or messages unless it is expressly written in the script to do so (or an error occurs).

Batch scripts are also hugely useful when automating tasks that need to be handled at certain events, for example user logon. Batch scripts are not transparent however and show the user a terminal window whilst running (as shown below) and the user can often see what commands are being run if '@Echo OFF' is not enabled (will be covered in a later batch script posts). Batch scripts are often used for simple tasks and can only utilise the commands and utilities available through the command prompt (or terminal).

    Script creation can be done in any almost text editing software, Microsoft Word and Wordpad however don't work as they add extra information (that isn't shown in the application) to each line, the program needs to save the file in the UTF-8 format. My 'weapon' of choice for script creation is a program called Notepad++ which runs on windows and is a powerful tool for not only script creation but almost any programming. One of the nicest things about Notepad++ is that you can install it on a USB key (thumbdrive, usb stick, etc.) making it portable, which allows you to script anywhere! Another added bonus is that the program allows for you to select which language you are writing in and will give you some syntax hints by changing the color of any keywords associated with that language.

  For related articles and more helpful hints on windows scripting and application development visit my Website for indepth details and handy applications.