Readme for WinMacro
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 WinMacro is a simple Macro recorder/player for Windows written in Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. It can record whatever you do at your Windows Desktop, and can replay them exactly. It doesn't record video, instead it uses windows hooking mechanisms to monitor your mouse and keyboard events, and plays them back. Therefore the recorded file is much smaller than what would be if you recorded live video, typically in the range of kilobytes. It looks exactly like all you're actions have been recorded by video though.
 
 You can use it for automating a sequence of tasks, as a practical demonstration of an application, or for GUI testing. The source code is available from the website geocities.com/win_macro, so you're free to do whatever you want.


Using WinMacro is very simple, in fact, you can't go wrong anywhere.
If you are going to record,

1.Type the name of the file you want to record into, directly or by selecting it by clicking Browse in the Record section.
2. Click the "Start Recording" button. 
3.Do whatever you wanted to record.
4. Press Ctrl+Esc, when you are finished.



If you're going to playback

1. Type the name of the file you want to playback, directly or by selecting it by clicking Browse in the playback section.
2. Click the "Playback" button.
3.The application then takes control of the mouse and keyboard and begins to play back the actions stored in the file. Once it's finished, a message box pops out, which says "Playback Over". The application returns control back to you.
4. If you ever wanted to interrupt playback (or recording), press Ctrl+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Del.
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That's all there is to it.

Bugs and Limitations
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1. Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+Esc and Ctrl+Break keys break the recording or playing back process, by evicting the hook. That means you can't record or playback those keystrokes. But if WinMacro ever hangs, you can easily recover control by using any of those keystrokes.

2. The Windows key doesn't work properly with WinMacro. Trouble is, it gets recorded as  some other keystroke, and playing it back can give weird results. So you'd better move your mouse to the Start button than rely on the Windows key.

3. WinMacro is intelligent enough to recognise files it recorded, so you can't simply play any file. But if you ever fiddle with the recorded file yourselves, the application may hang. Of course, you can always use the keystrokes mentioned above to recover. 

4. And remember, WinMacro simply records mouse and keyboard messages. So if you have an application that opens up in different window coordinates everytime you open it, then your mouse actions on that window may not be played back correctly. Notepad on Windows 98 has this behaviour. It opened up on center screen while I was recording, and opened on the left corner of the desktop when I played back. As a result, my mouse clicks on the window didn't play back correctly. However, you wouldn't have any problem with keystrokes, and you can always use Alt+F4 to close any application :)


About the Author
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I'm S. Senthil Kumar and I've finished my B.E in Computer Science and Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, TamilNadu, India. I'm interested and have decent knowledge in Java Programming (Client and Server Side), MFC and windows hooking/subclassing. 

   It was just plain curiosity that drove me to write this application, curious to see the mouse and keyboard actions appearing all by themselves. But it turned out to be quite useful, and I figured it might be so for someone else too. I'm giving the source ,so you can use it any way you can imagine. 

   Your feedback, comments, anything.. can be sent to senthilkumar_tce@yahoo.com or win_macro@yahoo.co.in. Unlike so many other developers, I rarely receive any mail, so any feedback is welcome. 

Good luck.

You downloaded this from http://geocities.com/win_macro


