Friday, March 25, 2011

The Simplest Programming Language That's Useful For Everyone


autohotkey icon
Introducing Autohotkey. Open-source Free scripting program.
With autohotkey you can do simple programming to:
  • Assign hotkeys to open programs/folders. For example if I press Alt + Z my internet explorer will pop out, neat..
  • Automate Daily Tasks. If a human can do it, autohotkey can do it, only faster.
  • Assign hotkeys in Video Games to increase gaming experience, see how to use Autohotkey in Warcraft III - Dota.
I'll teach you how to get started in this guide.


1) When you run it for the first time it will pop out a small message box as shown below:
     Autohotkey
2) Click 'Yes' and the programming script will be shown, this is where all the magic (and programming..) happens :)
3) Ignore all the nonsense after the semicolons ';' those are just comments and doesn't do anything in the programming. First we take a look at the code below:
#z::Run www.autohotkey.com
This is a sample code, which means if you press '[Windows Key] + Z" on your keyboard, it will open your default browser and go to autohotkey.com
Using the same syntax, the possibilities are endless, you can create endless of custom hotkeys for your own, for example I added the lines below to my script:
#1::Run C:\
#2::Run D:\
#s::Run C:\program files\
#g::Run www.google.com
I forgot to mention, the symbol # above means the windows key, you can replace it with Shift(+), Ctrl(^), Alt(!) keys or combine them to your liking, for example..
^1::Run C:\                           Ctrl + 1 to open C: drive of your computer
!2::Run D:\                            Alt+ 1 to open D: drive of your computer
^!s::Run C:\program files\      Ctrl + Alt + S to open program files folder
^#g::Run www.google.com      Ctrl + [Windows key] + G to go to google.com
4) Try adding in the above codes, save it (very important) and restart autohotkey. You could also right click the small green autohotkey icon on your bottom right hand corner of screen and choose 'Reload This Script' after saving the script. You could reopen your script anytime by right clicking the icon and select 'Edit This Script'
5) Try your hotkey and see if it works! Without making this guide too long, I'll stop right here. Feel free to experiment with it :)


End Note:
Refer to Autohotkey's Online Documentation for full list of hotkeys available.

Autohotkey is used in a series of guides in this site:
  • The Simplest Programming Language That's Useful For Everyone
  • The Simplest Way To Automate Routine Tasks Using Autohotkey
  • The Simplest Way To Increase Your Gaming Experience Using Autohotkey

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