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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME If you want to create macros that will do advanced tasks, use a dedicated macro program. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 Good macro programs: PowerPro for Windows; QuickKeys, Keyboard Maestro, Key Xing and Youpi Key for OS XMay 19, 2002 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard I run my e-mail software by pressing Alt-Shift-E. I've done it for years. I save my work, in all my programs, by pressing Shift-F10, and I convert Web addresses to real hyperlinks (complete with proper HTML code) by selecting each address and pressing Alt-Shift-H. There are many more key combinations I use every day. They're called macros or hotkeys. Because I use both a modern version of a Windows PC and a modern version of an Apple Macintosh computer, I've set up both my main computers at home (my Windows 2000 PC and my G4 Macintosh) with macros that do dozens of useful operations. This week I'll tell you what software I use to create macros for both computers. Operating systems often have macro facilities built in. Windows, for example, lets you open a folder, run a program, go to a Web site or open a document by pressing a combination of keys. You set that up through the properties of any standard shortcut. To do this, right click on a shortcut to get at the Properties menu, click the "Shortcut" tab and click inside the "Shortcut key:" field. Press a single key and Windows will assign a combination of keys based on the key you pressed. It's that simple. This is a superb idea, but it has a couple of drawbacks. Windows shortcut keys can't do anything complicated and they won't work at all unless the shortcut itself is located on the desktop or in the Start Menu. Far better, if you want to create macros that will do advanced tasks, is a dedicated macro program. I have two favorites. For Windows, there is no competition for PowerPro. It's free (get it at http://powerpro.webeddie.com) and it's much more powerful than any of the other Windows macro programs I've tried in the last six or seven years. You'll find a link to a review I wrote of PowerPro (when it was offered under the name "Stiletto") on the PowerPro site. Be sure to read it for more information. PowerPro handles simple and complex macros with grace and style better than any other Windows program, but it can do much more. It can watch for events such as newly opened windows and use them as triggers for any response, such as pressing the "OK" button on a pesky dialog box or closing an annoying Web-page window each time one shows up. One function I've used extensively is PowerPro's scheduler, which can display messages, run programs, shut down the computer at certain times and do many other functions. It's a far better scheduler than the one that comes with Windows. My other favorite is QuicKeys. It's not free and it can't do many of the things PowerPro can do, but it's easy to use and well designed. QuicKeys, from CE Software, is available in three versions -- one for Windows and one each for the old Macintosh operating system and Apple's new OS X operating system. (OS X is "Operating System 10," with the "X" representing a pun on the Roman numeral for "10" combined with "Generation X.") You can get a boxed version of QuicKeys at a store that sells software or you can order it from the company's Web site at www.cesoft.com. It costs $50 to $100, depending on the version, and you can try it for free for a limited time. I've never liked the Windows version of QuicKeys, possibly because it seems ponderous compared to the sleek behavior of PowerPro, but after a few days getting accustomed to the Mac OS X version of QuicKeys I became a big fan. After running out of patience when I was trying to get QuicKeys for OS X to perform the same kind of complicated macros that I use every day in PowerPro, I asked CE Software for help. By the time the company's technical experts got back to me, I had figured how to do the job myself. The experience helped me do many other complicated macros using QuicKeys. (Learning to create macros is like learning to speak a new language. It can be very hard and frustrating at first.) I'm not happy with the steep price CE Software charges for QuicKeys. Macro software shouldn't cost almost as much an entire operating system. I searched OS X download sites for cheaper alternatives and found a couple of promising utilities. Both are well designed. One that can easily perform most of the functions of QuicKeys is Keyboard Maestro, a $20 Mac OS X program from http://www.keyboardmaestro.com. I ran it instead of QuicKeys for about a month and hardly missed QuicKeys. It does not have the range of functions that QuicKeys for OS X does, but I suspect most users would not mind. Another utility for OS X that seems promising is Key Xing, which costs only $7. I liked it immediately. (But it's no longer available, so I've taken the link down.) If you like iTunes, the music software supplied free with all modern Apple computers, you'll love Key Xing. It lets you control the iTunes program from the keyboard, without needing iTunes visible. A third OS X macro program is iKey, from the French programmer Philippe Hupe. It's free, has many advanced features. Exploring them might take a week, but the time would be enjoyably spent. When I tried Youpi Key, I felt the program needed a little more polishing. Just before writing this review, I checked the author's Web site and saw that he had improved the software already. You can download Youpi Key from Hupe's Web site, http://phupe.club.fr/english/YKIndex.html. If you have a hard time getting to that site, go to www.versiontracker.com, click the OS X category, and use "iKey" (without quotes) as the search term. |