ButtonBar eXtended (with macro support)

[Samuel]

Have a look here:

I switch cm_FocusButtonBar and move on ButtonBar using the keyboard.

[brahman]

Got it! Thank you!

[Samuel]

Updated first post: Version 2.4 is available.
David had an Idea to add support for the vertical Buttonbar, so I added it:

Code: Select all

Version 2.4
• Added support for vertical ButtonBars
• use “-cv” and “-dv” instead of “-c” and “-d”

[Samuel]

One user had problems that after windows startup the modifier keys didn't work at the first usage of ButtonBar eXtended. It looks to be related to windows defender and the compiled Autohotkey script.

I updated the documentation to point out workarounds:

If you experience problems with modifier keys that are not working after windows startup, you may try to exclude the “ButtonBar eXtended.exe” file in your virus scanner. Another workaround would be to execute "ButtonBar eXtended.exe" without parameters in windows autostart.

[wolfie]

Anyone here with AHK v2 skills?

ButtonBar eXtended is brilliant, but was coded in AHK v1 which is known to be significantly slower than v2. It would really benefit from being re-coded in AHK v2.

Samuel kindly provides the source code here: viewtopic.php?t=20274

This tool might help conversion to some extent: https://github.com/mmikeww/AHK-v2-script-converter

Absolute nirvana would be if Christian Ghisler provided this functionality as part of TC - I guess that's unlikely to happen any time soon, but here's hoping!

[Horst.Epp]

2wolfie
This type of application will not benefit from better speed of AHK 2
Also, AHK 2 main benefit is a much cleaner syntax and not speed.
The converter is of no big help for most scripts I tried.

[wolfie]

@Horst - how do you know that it will not benefit from better speed of AHK 2 ?

And what you say is simply not true, tests have shown that AHK v2 is significantly faster than v1, it's not just better syntax.

[Horst.Epp]

@Horst - how do you know that it will not benefit from better speed of AHK 2 ?

Because Button bar extended doesn't do any massive file operations itself.
Where do you see any bottleneck in the current version ?

[wolfie]

If you only have a small number of extra buttons, there is no real problem. However, I now have 105 buttons in my toolbar controlled by this tool and response is quite sluggish - my laptop has i9 CPU with 64GB of RAM, so definitely not a slow computer!

It's a great concept, but I feel sure that this tool could be rewritten either in AHK v2 or some other language and work much faster.

[wolfie]

AHK v1 optimization
https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6413

AHK v2 optimization
https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=559263
https://www.reddit.com/r/AutoHotkey/comments/190cv8i/optimize_your_ahkv2_code_for_speed_revisiting/
https://github.com/samfisherirl/Compare-Code-Speed-GUI-AHKv2-Optimize-Scripts-For-Speed

[wolfie]

So no one can help?

[Hacker]

wolfie,
I don't think porting BBX to AHK v2 would provide any perceivable improvement.

Roman

[Horst.Epp]

If you only have a small number of extra buttons, there is no real problem. However, I now have 105 buttons in my toolbar controlled by this tool and response is quite sluggish - my laptop has i9 CPU with 64GB of RAM, so definitely not a slow computer!
eel sure that this tool could be rewritten either in AHK v2 or some other language and work much faster.

I don't see why the number of buttons has any influence on the performance.

[Samuel]

Perhaps there is some sort of virus scanner involved.