Thanks to a recommendation from Jake, who I talk to on the #ahk chat room, I’m going to talk about the languages in addition to scripts I find interesting or useful. I’ll be doing a fairly long series of tutorials on the AutoHotkey scripting language. I’m writing up a plan for them to hopefully keep it clean, see it on Google docs. (It pretty much updates as I type.) All of these videos will be in the aboutscript YouTube channel and on my personal Screenr where I record them.

How To Use

Different people learn different ways, but I can only give my opinion.

If I was trying to learn AutoHokey with these tutorials I’d take a relaxed approach. I’d start a video, or a playlist, and just listen. The great thing about these streaming video sites is how easy it is to rewind if you didn’t understand something, or want to see what was happening on the screen because you were playing Mines instead of watching.

Any time a new idea is introduced I’d pause the video and try to understand it through writing it. If you can modify the code you’re looking at: there’s a good chance you understand it.

Also look for a starting point. If you already know how to install AutoHotkey skip that one. When you see the first one you don’t know about, watch that one and continue from there. The tutorials build upon the one before it so if you haven’t seen variables, the expressions might be more confusing.

The Tuts

Basics

The word “basics” is relative to AutoHotkey. You might have 10 years of programming experience but never created a hotkey (keyboard shortcut).

1. Install and Hello World
2. Variables
3. Pitfall: When to use %, and when not to
4. Send, Click, and other artificial inputs
5. Hotkeys
6. Graphic User Interfaces
7. Functions
8. Conditionals (If, Else If, Else)
9. Component Object Model

I’ll add more here as I make it. Subscribe to the RSS or Twitter to know when the next one comes out.