AutoHotkey Community

The Opener is a fully customizable window that allows the user to select a variety of user defined applications to launch (or files to open) at once.

• The window will size itself based on the configurations the user has setup.
• Each program or file can be opened with a few different preferences including setting the priority of the application and running another AutoHotkey script.
• Adding new items is done completely within the program.

I initially wrote it because I had lots of shortcuts on my desktop and was clicking half of them every time I was starting to do certain types of things.

I hope you guys like it and use it. Comments, suggestions, questions, and bug reports are all welcome. I'll try to keep up on this for the weekend, but I will be away for a week starting Monday.

The current version is v.2.1

Nice Script! Seems to work great, except that I am getting an error every time an item is launched.

Error: File not found for --
Attempted to launch: --

Is this related to window title or groups?

You were getting the file not found error because I forgot to check to make sure each radio group had a selected radio control before sending the radio id to the launcher function. In the sample, there was only one radio in the more group, but it wasn't a default. So the script would catch the None radio in Games, but tried to run a something for More.

v.12 is uploaded and ready to download.

I love the Opener. The Opener and FavMenu make my Windows Computers useful. Finally.

Thank you.

Made a new version that supports command line arguments. Get The Opener v.15 to be able to use this feature. There is also a bug fix that prevented the minimize option from working properly. Not all applications accept this command (ie Calculator), but most should.

In order to use v.15, you will need to upgrade your opener.ini file. Use the included updater.ahk script to make the necessary changes. If you haven't used The Opener before, you don't have to do anything.

Huge update:
I'm happy to announce the release of The Opener V.2

• You can now have multiple separate configuration files in the same folder. Configuration files MUST have the .ini extension.
  
  • If you only have one configuration file (excluding sample.ini), the one file will be loaded.
  • If you have multiple files, you will be asked to select the file you want to use. Here you will also be given the option to start a new configuration file. You can return to this window by clicking the Select Setup button.
  • If you have multiple files and want to skip directly to a specific configuration, pass the file name as a command line argument when you launch opener. This will work on the command line or in a shortcut.
• You are no longer restricted to one checkbox group. Use the Edit Group window to specify a type for each group you have made. This type will be displayed when you select the group number to help you edit your configuration.
• You can now have more than one group in a column. By clicking the Edit Positioning button, you will be able to select the maximum number of items that can appear in one column.
  
  • If you have three groups with two items per column each and you set this number to 6,
    the three groups will appear in one column.
  • If you have three groups with two items per column each and you set this number to 5,
    the three groups will appear in two columns, with only the third group in the second column.

As with v.15, you will need to run updater.ahk. This will ask you to select the configuration file you want to update. This will then make the necessary changes to the configuration file you selected.

I'm getting an error with Notepad. I switched the title to Untitled - Notepad and I no longer get the error.

Perhaps a change to SetTitleMatchMode could help... not sure.

Nice script. I was evaluating it because you have done a great user interface. This is an area I'm still learning.

What is the error you are getting? SetTitleMatchMode is set to 2 so Notepad should work fine.

If you can read through the code and have a good idea of how everything is getting built, I'll be impressed. Even I get lost in the BuildMainGui subroutine at times. I'm sure there are some other scripts where the gui building is simpler to follow.

Soon I'll have an update that will let you look for a process name instead of a window title. So check back for the update.

Hi, TheIrishThug,
really a funny coincidence:
I'm just working on a - not named yet - "Opener-"application with a similar appraoch like your TheOpener. I took a short overview to your script and I really like it, now I dare barely publishing mine.
Now I have to put some more efforts into it!
Nice job, carry on!
Regards,
Klaus

TheIrishThug
Oops guess I hadn't looked at the code much...
I get the error when after I add an application
after adding Character Map the following variable is missing from the ini
script_1=sample.ahk

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
Error: File not found for Notepad
Attempted to launch:
Failed to read script location.

Press OK to continue launching other items or
Cancel to edit settings.
---------------------------
OK Cancel
---------------------------

Good point! I still might learn something though.

Keybored,
script_# is only there when you have a script set to run for that item. Check to make sure that Notepad is set to run scripts and the path is actually listed. After that the file not found error should go away.

Klaus,
If you look around on the forums you will find tons of scripts that do the same thing. Maybe yours does somethings differently than mine. It's always interesting to see how different people come up with different ways to do the same thing.

TheIrishThug
The variable is getting removed while I add another application.
~~
To replicate the bug;
Edit Setup

Name = Character Map
Group = 1
Window Title = Character
Location = C:\WINDOWS\system32\charmap.exe

Save Edits
Save & Close
~~
Sorry I can't see in the code where this goes wrong. It seems to be rewriting the ini without this variable at some point.
Let me know if you have more questions. Replication is vital to debugging and I'm glad to help.

The Opener v2.2 is available for download.

New: Check against a process name instead of a window title by placing “ProcTitle|PROCESS_NAME” in the window title field, where PROCESS_NAME is the name of the process you are checking against.
Fix: Spacing was wring if the last column had the most items of any column.
Fix: Script names were being lost when edits were saved, but the script names were never inspected. (Thanks keybored)