AHK - Once Upon A Time ...

[BoBo]

... provided by the WayBack Machine
... autohotkey.com/board/ AKA the old Forum
... autohotkey.com/boards/ AKA the new/current Forum

[Drugwash]

You should first warn users to deactivate any redirect cleaning extensions in their browsers.

Then... any older snapshots available? 2021 is only last year (at the time of posting this). I heard about AHK sometime in 2009 if not earlier. It may be more interesting to read such older impressions.

[tidbit]

also once-upon-a-time: https://www.autohotkey.com/logos/
We used to do google style logos for holidays/events

[Delta Pythagorean]

Why the discontinue? A lot of those look really nice!

[tidbit]

probably effort. Life got in the way of whoever was incharge of updating it (joedf?)

[joedf]

Yes, I miss the google-doodle AHK logos! @TLM actually started the "tradition", and I thought I continue/add to it.
But then, I more or less stopped after the site homepage redesign and security changes. I guess it's still worth doing since we still see the full logo in the main forum theme, but otherwise (other than the /search page and the foundation pages) we only see the reduced version.
Maybe fellow users and or anyone here would like to make a special logo doodle too? I wonder google does.. maybe they have a doodle committee that do doodles

EDIT: I was thinking maybe I could redo some key ones (with the new SVG logo that we have) and have them in rotation. So at least there's a little bit of festivity even when I lack the time or when life happens

EDIT2: Btw, does anyone know who made this logo (I call it 'redux' or 'modern' in my files - the current one, and the old one I call original)? I still haven't been able to find out. I recreated the redux version in SVG so it won't look blurry anymore especially with all the newer higher screen resolutions... but I wanted to credit the original author. I uploaded them here as alternate versions. The wiki page says Chris Mallet... is that correct?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AutoHotkey_logo.png

[tidbit]

"I wonder google does.. maybe they have a doodle committee that do doodles"
I read a thing where they often have doodles being made 1-2 years in advanced. Also they have doodles in many different languages/religions. So ya, they have a doodle team(s). and "Google" has to be visible from the design used. Sometimes it pushes it though, can't tell, too abstract.

https://www.google.com/doodles
"
Who designs the doodles?
There is a team of illustrators (we call them doodlers) and engineers that are behind each and every doodle you see.
"

edit2: iirc we had a logo contest long ago and that was the winner? Or maybe we never chose a winner and that one just... popped up?

[joedf]

Interesting... Is this it? I found these leads, it looks "philou" had the most votes by far but all the images were not preserved. I even tried webarchive...
https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/61115-autohotkey-brand-competition-vote-now/
https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/28723-ahk-brand/page-5#entry239902

I saw some comments saying the keys in philou's logo look a bit a mac keyboard, but still most liked it because it looked professional...
Does it ring a bell?

[ahk7]

Yes, the Philou created the logo, but as mentioned in one of the threads someone recreated them once the originals were lost and Philou couldn't be reached. (edit I had the logo as part of my TF library documentation page before moving it to Github and credited Philou, so 100% sure)

[joedf]

Mystery solved! Thanks @ahk7 and @tidbit !

Perhaps I could try to dig up his email from the archived forums...
..but at least for now, I have the correct ahk user.

Edit: I think I found him here:

Spoiler

https://www.deviantart.com/brumm
seaching parts of the old email ([at] funkensturm [dot] de) lead me to that page which shares the same avatar/picture.
and that same username "brumm" leads me to
https://twitter.com/funkensturm
https://github.com/brumm
but nothing mentioning autohotkey... following breadcrumbs here...
I've sent him an email to confirm this is philou.

[tidbit]

if you need SVG's I can do that no problem. I'd assume we have permission since he submitted it to a contest for us to use, but we just need higher quality/resolution versions (yay svg)

[joedf]

Well I did my best recreating it, and I assuming we have permission (i hope we do ahah), but I always wondered what font it was... I tried many, and I think I found one but it was ever so slightly off.
Now everywhere we have the svg version (docs, homepage, phpbb, etc.), except the /logos page ...

EDIT: I'll keep that in mind for future SVGs tho, thanks!

[nnnik]

At one point an exploit was discovered in the old forum code after it had been actively abused leading to many passwords being leaked.

[joedf]

@nnnik You mean phpbb v2 or IPBoards?

[joedf]

User philou got back to me! Was very welcoming and helpful
He is indeed the creator of the logo. He was a lot more into design and things Mac, but is now really more into programming. AHK was his first programming language.
He suspects the font is "Myriad Pro Semibold". I thought I had tried that but perhaps I had some weird font hinting and character spacing...