Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

Helpful script writing tricks and HowTo's
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Joe Glines
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Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

10 Mar 2019, 21:10

Check out my tutorial videos walking-through some of AHK Studio's key features. If you love AHK Studio as much as I do, don't forget to donate to Maestrith for his hard work on this!. Click here to download AHK Studio.

AHK Studio Tutorials
  1. Using the OmniSearch to change settings / find items
  2. Getting AHK Syntax help and AHK Studio Menu Help
  3. Adding a Toolbar to AHK Studio
  4. Editing Hotkeys
  5. Highlighting cursor location in Functions and commands /Auto-suggesting AutoHotkey key words in AHK Studio
  6. Editing your Context menus / Right click menu
  7. Easily Moving text around a page
  8. New File Template for files in AHK Studio
  9. Add words to your Personal Variable Lists so they show up in Intellisense / Auto-suggested words
  10. Hotstrings on Crack / Edit Replacements
  11. Use the Quick Find to easily Search / Replace text (pretty amazing!)
  12. Second way to Find / replace multiple instances & do multi-line typing
  13. Splitting Controls/Windows (adding new windows, Toolbars, Project Explorer, etc.)
  14. Selecting and Customizing your Theme: Adjust Fonts, Colors, Sizes, etc.
  15. Auto-create Includes & Publish (bringing all Includes back into script)
  16. Easily pack up #Includes and share code to Pastebin / AHKScript org
  17. Toggling Auto-Indention and Centering on the Caret (where to keep focus)
  18. Auto Closing Parens, Braces, Quotes, etc.
  19. Inserting & Toggling Comments / Annotation
  20. Dump text to the Output / Debug Window
  21. Displaying white space and end of line (EOL) characters
  22. Level-up your programming by using the cool Debug features
  23. Get Intellisense to offer-up words/functions, etc. from files outside the one you’re working in
  24. Quickly jump to Functions, GoSubs, Classes & Instances
  25. Adding additional file types like HTML, XML, JSON,Python, CSV and have Intellisense
  26. Run Selected Text and Display Current Hotkeys
  27. Creating and Managing Backups & Version control (Plus pushing to your GitHub account)
  28. Finding text in multiple files / folders and easily seeing the line they are on
  29. What to do when AHK Studio won't load / Looks "funky" :shock:
  30. Adjusting the Inserted code when Toggling lines as comments
  31. Clear Debug / Output window in AHK Studio
  32. Adding, Deleting, Manipulating matching braces, Parens, Quotes, etc.
  33. Utilizing Restore functionality (this is Amazing! :superhappy: )
  34. Copying code and Pasting in RTF (keeping color coding) in other programs
  35. Adding a Breakpoint

AHK Studio Walk-Thrus
  1. AutoHotkey webinar on AHK Studio
  2. Super-deep dive (the video is nearly 2 hours long) into AutoHotkey Functionality with Maestrith
  3. Discussing features in AHK Studio & SciTE
  4. Using Includes to streamline code
  5. I interviewed Maestrith for one of my expert interviews
  6. Playing with functions / Tips & tricks
Last edited by Joe Glines on 28 May 2019, 15:19, edited 11 times in total.
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hoppfrosch
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Re: Level-up you AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Stuido!

11 Mar 2019, 00:42

As there are way too many Tutorials listed ... is anywhere covered how to use/configure AHKStudio with Autohotkey v2?
SOTE
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Re: Level-up you AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Stuido!

11 Mar 2019, 06:26

Excellent post on AHK Studio.

You might want to change that title typo from AHK Stuido -> AHK Studio!
use/configure AHKStudio with Autohotkey v2
I think the problem is that AHK v2 is still alpha (so syntax in future versions are more susceptible to change), where AHK v1 is the main, stable, and most widely used branch. Personally, I usually use AHK v1 or AHK_H. jeeswg has done a lot of work on converting AHK v2 functions to AHK v1 (https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=29689). So arguably, most of any new functionality of AHK v2, could be done or transferred to AHK v1 via such written functions.

It could also be problematic for the author to support both v1 and v2 at the same time. Edit- you could possibly work with the author and write the code necessary for AHK v2. There is also AHK v1 to AHK v2 converters that might be of interest- https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=36754
Last edited by SOTE on 12 Mar 2019, 11:17, edited 2 times in total.
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maestrith
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Re: Level-up you AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Stuido!

11 Mar 2019, 09:10

hoppfrosch wrote:
11 Mar 2019, 00:42
As there are way too many Tutorials listed ... is anywhere covered how to use/configure AHKStudio with Autohotkey v2?
Studio will not run using v2. You can create a syntax XML for v2 but you would still have to run it with 1.1 at this time.
John H Wilson III 05/29/51 - 03/01/2020. You will be missed.AHK Studio OSDGUI Creator
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All code is done on a 64 bit Windows 10 PC Running AutoHotkey x32
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Joe Glines
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Re: Level-up you AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Stuido!

11 Mar 2019, 09:10

SOTE wrote:
11 Mar 2019, 06:26
You might want to change that title typo from AHK Stuido -> AHK Studio!
Thanks! There were actually two typos in in the subject line. :facepalm:
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hoppfrosch
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

12 Mar 2019, 00:51

@joe glines: Some More typos in your list "AHK Studio Walk-Thrus"

* unintentional linebreaks (items 2 and 3 / items 4 and 5)
* erroneous Url in item 4/5

--------------
maestrith wrote:
11 Mar 2019, 09:10
Studio will not run using v2. You can create a syntax XML for v2 but you would still have to run it with 1.1 at this time.
Thx for your reply. I don't care if AHKStudio itself runs with AHK1.1. or AHK2 - I'm looking for an editor/debugger for AHK2 scripts.
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Joe Glines
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

12 Mar 2019, 10:58

hoppfrosch wrote:
12 Mar 2019, 00:51
@joe glines: Some More typos in your list "AHK Studio Walk-Thrus"
Thanks! Updated.
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DaveT1
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

27 Jun 2019, 15:36

Hi Joe,

this is a great topic - thanks so much for the effort.

I'm trying hard to get to grips with AHKS - there are bits of it that are fantastic and areas where I'm finding it harder going (probably my ineptness). I've had a quick look through some of the tutorials and learnt some really useful things. However, I have the odd comment / question to make on some of the topics. But before diving in, is there a way to keep all posts related to eg., tutorial 3 together? Then they'd form a coherant thread on that tutorial topic rather than haveing posts on tutorial 3 mixed up with any posts on any other tutorials. If topic threads can be kept together, then we'd have the makings of a terrific resource to help others get into AHKS, and as a reference for those already converted.

Look forward to hearing what you think.
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nnnik
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

28 Jun 2019, 05:31

@DaveT1 the best shot for keeping topics together is giving them a prefix to group them in the same category.
e.g. many people use [AHKV2] in the Ask for help forums.
Additionally you can link from each topic to the other ones.
If that's still not enough you could group the topics in one parent thread and link to all subtopics from there.
If you want to ask for help regarding the usage of AHK Studio I would reccomend using this forum.
https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewforum.php?f=62&sid=a1cacacbd5d879f60cf2c0d671165f79
Which you already discovered as I have seen.
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DaveT1
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

28 Jun 2019, 09:50

Thanks @nnnik. I've found @maestrith to be enormously helpful on the other topic you pointed out, but with more detailed issues. This topic seems aimed at getting more of an overview of what AHK Studio can do (a huge amount!) and how to achieve it, so it would be something that would benefit from the experience of other AHK Studio users(?)

I think that what I'd like to see is your
If that's still not enough you could group the topics in one parent thread and link to all subtopics from there.
Then each subtopic would be a thread discussing, eg., Joe's AHK Studio Tutorial 35, and then perhaps another subtopic discussing some other tutorial, and so on. Each subtopic would then be 'self-contained' (and as such it would provide an easily accessible resource per topic), to Joe's main 'Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!' topic.

I think I'd need Joe to agree, but if he does, does he know how to do this (he seems pretty active on the forums) or is there an FAQ somewhere describing this?

Thaks again.
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Joe Glines
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

08 Jul 2019, 16:25

@DaveT1 sorry I didn't see this earlier. My main point in the tutorials was to show how to use AutoHotkey Studio, not necessarily to teach AutoHotkey code. Having said that, I just completed and "Intro to AutoHotkey course" on Udemy. I'm keeping it free for a while... Note- this is a VERY intro course! After taking a break I plan to do an intermediate course and then possibly some grouped together around topics like: Web Scraping, Regular Expressions, Loops, etc. (Most of which I do have tutorials on my site https://the-automator.com
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DaveT1
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

09 Jul 2019, 03:13

@Joe Glines no probs....in this topic I wasn't thinking that this would be a learning experience for AHK Scripting (though I am always in need of this ;) ;) ), but rather a topic for sharing experience and understanding of how to use AHK Studio. I'm a big fan of AHK Studio but struggle sometimes to understand how to use it. Your excellent short vids are a great 'framework' on which to hang further discussion on it's use.

So, taking as an example, your "35. Adding a Breakpoint": I think that in a sub-topic discussion thread on this vid we could also usefully add that (i) you can set a breakpoint by clicking the margin between line numbering and the editing window (like Scit4ahk), (ii) that the breakpoint(s) appear in the Code Explorer window for ease of navigation (but might have to do a couple of refreshes first) and (iii) to note that when the debugger is launched, AHKStudio always seems note the breakpoint line number as being on the line before the actual breakpoint. And I'm sure that there are other useful user thoughts on how to set and use breakpoints that I don't know!

I'm certainly not suggesting that your vids are re-done to include these points. But if we could set up a sub-topic on each of your vids, then useful user thoughts could be added and have all this kept in one sub-topic. This would make it a much easier resource for people to use, rather than having user thoughts on all your vids mixed up in one long discussion thread.

Does that make sense? Do you think it's a good idea? Unfortunately being relatively inexperienced with AHK and even less experienced with the forum boards, I'm not sure how to do this per nnnik's suggestion
If that's still not enough you could group the topics in one parent thread and link to all subtopics from there.
Let me know what you think. I'm very happy to contribute what little I know and hopefully learn from the experience of others.
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Joe Glines
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

09 Jul 2019, 14:27

I did the videos because it is quick and easy to document. While I see value in your idea, I don't have the bandwidth to do it. :(
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DaveT1
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

11 Jul 2019, 05:45

Ok Joe, thanks for the input. Understand totally about not having the time....I'll post in this topic as and when I have observations on AHKStudio that (hopefully!) add to your excellent videos.
DaveT1
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Re: Level-up your AutoHotkey coding by using AHK Studio!

11 Jul 2019, 06:07

Re: "AHK Studio Tutorials 35. Adding a Breakpoint" by Joe Glines:

Just to add these observations:

1. As well as manually typing in breakpoints (of the form ;*[breakpointname]), you can also set a breakpoint by clicking the margin between the line numbering and the editing window (like Scit4ahk).
2. Any breakpoint(s) appear in the Code Explorer window for ease of navigation. I've found that sometimes I need to do a couple of refreshes (right click on the code explorer window) before they appear.
3. Note that when the debugger is launched, AHKStudio always seems note the breakpoint line number as being on the line before the actual breakpoint.

HTHs.

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