AutoHotkey Community

[Rainy-Day]

This is a very cool and useful script. Switching between windows is something everybody does very often, so this is one of the most useful scripts..

I noticed a few problems with docked windows: resizing one, then letting it go to dock, then undocking it again makes part of it disappear behind the edge of the screen. The window in question was opera, it was docked on the right side, and I resized it to make it wider. In addition, activating any pop-up in the docked window and moving mouse on it will make the original window disappear. The popup disappears then, too. After that, in a second, the window appears again. I'm not sure how often I need pop-ups in a browser, but at least for the other program I have docked right now, explorer2x, it's not a big deal, I don't think I do that often there.

If you maximize some other window, all docked windows get minimized and un-docked. It may be a good idea to undock them when they minimize, but it's certainly not a good idea to minimize them when a window maximizes.

It'd be very nice to allow for alternative ways to activate the menu. Anything from F4 to alt-w to alt-mouse click, or just middle mouse button. It'd also be nice to be able to go in the other direction in the list by pressing alt and some other button, like caps lock. That'd be very handy to go forward in the list by pressing alt-tab and reverse direction by alt-caps (or, in my case caps is remapped to esc, so it'd be alt-esc).

I see you have this in your todo list: dock to corners. That'd be very neat, too.

Thanks for a great script!
_________________
-AK

[evl]

@Rainy-Day:

Thanks for the ideas and bug reports:

1)I'll fix the issues with resizing docked windows and when the docked window gets disabled due to a pop-up. The resizing issues are not surprising to me as the feature was not designed to cope with that yet, but I will if others are using it of course.

2) "If you maximize some other window, all docked windows get minimized and un-docked." I've not been able to replicate this one at all. The closest thing that I am aware of is if you maximise a docked window it stays as always-on-top, which I need to change, but that doesn't sound too much like what you described, so maybe you can give an example with standard windows programs that I can duplicate?

3) I can probably add a user-defined hotkey for showing the alt-tab list, but some of the functionality requires that the Alt-Key is still pressed down, so I'm not sure if I'll add the ability to completely change alt-tab to some other hotkeys. I'll look into it. Alt+CapsLock is a very logical alternative to Alt+Shift+Tab and only took one line of code to add so that's already gone into the latest version I'm working on, which already has quite a few additions and improvements, so I'll post it pretty soon.

[Guest]

Thanks evl!

I could not reproduce the problem with maximizing some other window and docked windows getting minimized..

when testing, I ran into something else: I have opera docked on right side and if I minimize it, I can't restore it. And the popup right-click menu acts strangely. I can maximize it, though (most of times). IOW, if you accidentally minimize it, you have to undock and re-dock it. And even that does not let me restore it.. It looks like by minimizing it, it somehow garbled it's 'restored' coordinates to be outside of screen. It looks like it gets restored, but no part of it is visible on screen.. Let me try this with xplorer2x.. Hm, interesting.. when xplorer2x was on top of maximized opera, and I clicked minimize, it'd minimize, and then restore itself in about a second without me doing anything. When I minimized Opera, it did minimize itself properly, and when I clicked on it in taskbar, it'd restore itself without any problem. I can't make much sense out of this.


Incidentally, moving docked window is reset after dock/restore. Which isn't the end of the world, but it'd be even cleaner if it was possible to move and resize it - I guess code that takes care of one thing will take care of another, too.

re - alternative shortcuts. I think it'd be nice to have an option for alt-leftclick to open menu, and F4 to call up menu is also kind of neat, because you don't have to hold down any key while you're looking for the right window.. But I can imagine that it's more trouble than it's worth to change code to do that. Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd use that if it was possible.

At any rate, this script is very neat.. I'll be patiently awaiting new version

[RainyDay]

Forgot this: when you start a program by double-click in docked xplorer2, the resulting window is hidden. i.e. you have to dock xplorer2 or minimize it and only then you'll see the window that was created. It confused me a few times, it felt like double click on a file had no effect..

[evl]

New version:

http://autohotkey.net/file/users/Members/evl/AltTab/ALtTab.ahk

Lots of stuff changed and added I'll probably try and release another version soonish as I'm still working on a few bits, but this version's a considerable improvement in some areas.

[jOc]

Hi

Very cool script. I would have one simple request.
I would like to have configurable keys.

For example I currently use:
RControl & RShift::AltTab ; Hold down right-control then press right-shift repeatedly to move forward.
RControl & Enter::ShiftAltTab ; Without even having to release right-control, press Enter to reverse direction

In order to work with this script I need to have each scripts compiled in separate files. I guess first hooks keypresses, translates them and secons script catches them...

Tnx,
jOc

[evl]

UPDATE: Just for those interested, I made some progress on user-definable Alt-Tab keys so hopefully not too long before I can get that finished.

I still had plans for configurable keys but hadn't gotten around to it as there are a number of code changes, some of which might be easy to overlook - I'll try and make it a high priority as it's been asked for before.

Trying to "trick" the Alt-Tab replacement into using other hotkeys in a 2nd file won't work very well and couldn't be made to work either due to some manual keystate checks for the alt key, etc.

[evl]

New version:

http://autohotkey.net/file/users/Members/evl/AltTab/AltTab.ahk

(made quite a few major changes, especially being able to choose your own hotkeys (only manually in the file at the moment (see "USER EDITABLE SETTINGS" section), but I will add a gui soon) so let me know if you encounter any errors)

[jOc]

Hi

Thx for the uploaded script, but I have problems configuring hotkeys to work...
For example:
Alt_Hotkey =RCtrl& ; the key to use as equivalent to Alt in Alt-Tab
this does not work.

It works:
Alt_Hotkey =^

And if I add:
Tab_Hotkey =+ ; the key to use as equivalent to Tab in Alt-Tab
It does not work anymore...

I would like to set
RCtrl to.behave.like Alt (in alt.tab)
Rshift to.behave.like Tab (in alt.tab)
RCtrl&Enter to.behave.like Shift (in alt.shift.tab)

Any suggestion?

[Micha]

Superb, very useful and cool script
I've installed it on 6 PCs, everybody loves it

Thanks
Micha

[evl]

@ jOc: The difficulty there was mostly in having 2 modifier keys for alt and tab - my life would have been a _LOT_ easier if AHK supported hotkeys such as "1 & 2 & 3::" because then I wouldn't have to translate between modifier symbols and their word equivalent for checking key states.
Anyhow, here's what you need for your keys:

[Guest]

evl, great thanks

Script now works like a charm.

I hope I will soon find enough time to get used with AH, because realy great apps can be built with quite moderate level of knowledge (compared to "real" programming languages, of course).

Regards,
jOc

[TheLeO]

_________________
And i say: where there is a problem , there is a solution.(well some where that is.)
::
I Have Spoken
::

[dieguti]

Hi, I love your Alt-tab replacement.
But when the list appears, it always show the same app selected, so I can't change quickly between two apps.
Perhaps if it could sort by last access...

Thanks in advance

[evl]

@ dieguti: The list should be sorted by last access, just like the ordinary Alt-Tab (unless you manually click on the headers to change the sort order, but this isn't remembered between closing and running the script). The list is generated from the "Winget, List" command which contains the stack of windows in the order they were last accessed. One thing that affects the order of windows in the stack is if they are set to be Always On Top then they stay at the top of the list, but then it should still select the next program after the active one.
Is it always selecting the top item in the list? Does it matter what window was last active? Is there more than one entry in the list for the program that's always selected? I've not run across any such trouble so you'll have to give me as much detail as possible.