Multiple choice app launcher?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fitwell
  • Start date Start date
fitwell wrote:

<cut>

http://powerpro.webeddie.com/

what can Powerpro do?
Click to expand...

[snip]

Thanks for the info. I used PowerPro for years, from the time it was
Stiletto. I now use AI for most everything that PP did and the rest,
no longer need. I outgrew PP though it's an _excellent_ program.

I still haven't found a good solution to this. I'll keep trying.
Every once in a while I try here in this group, but nothing new seems
to have come down the pike. Again, most launchers act the same, none
give multiple-choice options to launch at any given moment. You have
to click through each time and can't just choose at once any given
combination and _then_ launch.

Thanks guys. Easiest would be if I could make it myself, but not a
programmer.

Cheers!
 
fitwell said:
Thanks for the info. I used PowerPro for years, from the time it was
Stiletto. I now use AI for most everything that PP did and the rest,
no longer need. I outgrew PP though it's an _excellent_ program.

I still haven't found a good solution to this. I'll keep trying.
Every once in a while I try here in this group, but nothing new seems
to have come down the pike. Again, most launchers act the same, none
give multiple-choice options to launch at any given moment. You have
to click through each time and can't just choose at once any given
combination and _then_ launch.

Thanks guys. Easiest would be if I could make it myself, but not a
programmer.
Click to expand...

Have you tried AutoHotkey?
http://www.autohotkey.com

Also download SmartGui Creator - Easy way to make a GUI for a script.

Here is the list of all comands:
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands.htm

And a tutorial:
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Tutorial.htm
 
I'm looking for an app to do this, again. I've not been successful up
till now in finding one.

The trick is to be able to quickly and easily launch 1 to 15 items, or
so, i.e., an app and any number of folders. This is for use with My
Own Backup and the idea would be to be able to launch the app and any
of the folders I need when backing up. Since I don't back everything
up all at once, ever, it's a pain to have to launch everything all at
once.

I have a multiple choice bat that was kindly written up for me, but
it's a pain in the butt to use <g>. I'd really like to find a Windows
alternative to replace all the hand-written bat files I've done up
till now for this purpose.

Thanks much, everyone, in advance!
Click to expand...

Finally found a way to do this. I found that the freeware "Open
Thousands of Apps" (OTA) had best GUI for this as unlike one of the
other Kissy apps, it was fairly easy to add shortcuts and apps to and
the window doesn't collapse accordion-style after each launch. There
were only 2 difficulties - one I've learned to live with, the other
got a workaround.

The first problem is that you only have paths to work with. Unlike
some lauchers where you put a path and then a description for what
you're launching and you thereafter just click on the description,
here you only have the path to go on and that can be tricky to
identify what you're actually launching esp. if paths are rather long.
Can live with this though as what this app does is so vital that
overcomes this shortcoming and I've renamed some of the shortcuts to
include as much info as necessary to identify them.

The next thing was not acceptable, however. After launching each
item, OTA no longer was top most so I'd have to click on its icon in
the taskbar to bring it to the front again. This defeated the purpose
of having a fast way to open any particular sequence of apps/folders,
etc., on any given day. An AutoIt script takes care of this problem.
Thanks to the AutoIt forum for help on the topmost function, it has
worked ever since they helped me a bit of the code!

Only one thing, once you launch OTA via the AutoIt script, nothing
else can be topmost and you can't really do anything else then while
its up and running. However, this isn't a problem as you launch
whatever you need to and close OTA anyway.

So I find that this whole method works perfectly enough for me and has
made my life much easier.

Here's the AI script:




Local $Title = "Open Thousands of Apps - Drag - Drop - Click"
Run("D:\AGENTF~1\000-LA~1\OPMYAPV9.EXE")
WinWait($Title)
WinSetOnTop($Title, "", 1)

Opt("WinWaitDelay", 0)
While WinExists($Title)
WinActivate($Title)
WinWaitNotActive($Title)
WEnd





Only line 2 needs changing for this to work for anyone and in any
situation. The 2nd line is the path to where the actual OTA exe is
located so just change the path to it and you're set to go.

I'm on Win98SE so this should work on any OS, too, I imagine.

Lastly, for each tab you add a path to, OTA creates an LST file with
the corresponding alphabet letter. i.e., if you drag and drop a path
to something in the C tab, you'll see a file called C.LST created. If
into B, you get B.LST, etc.

Those LST files along with the INI file is all you need to back up in
order to always have a working copy of this particular launching
instance, something I need to do as I reformat my computer once or
twice a year.

Enjoy! :oD
 
Just checked on OpenExpert. For some reason, download links on OE's
page appear not to work, so just search for it in Google [as one word]
and you'll find several links that you can d/l from, like download.com
 
Kittie said:
Just checked on OpenExpert. For some reason, download links on OE's
page appear not to work, so just search for it in Google [as one word]
and you'll find several links that you can d/l from, like download.com
Click to expand...

Their download page is here
http://www.baxbex.com/downloads.html

it shows these DL links:

http://www.baxbex.com/files/openexp.exe
http://www.getafile.com/cgi-bin/merlot/get/baxbex/en/openexp.exe
http://212.227.102.108/files_e/openexp.exe

The first link worked just now (the other two didn't).

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)
 
Could you do this with a multiple-associations app? This will allow you
to associate more than one app with an extension/file type. Two
freeware apps that do this are WAssociate and OpenExpert.

WAssociate:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wstudios/Associate/index.html

OpenExpert:
http://www.baxbex.com/openexpert.html
[hard to download; above has two download locations, but it's often
unavailable. Best to use a download manager.]
Click to expand...

A long workaround. I've used both and now only use ContextEdit. You
still don't have the ability to launch ANY sequence of MANY apps at
any given time.

Most launchers are limited to 5 to 10 apps and some do not deal with
shortcuts.

As many know, if you prefer to launch different instances of Agent the
newsreader, for example, this isn't good as the instances are
controlled through the shortcuts. Each shortcut _always_ points to
the main EXE, it's the folder into which you've put your different
instances that appears in that shortcut that determines which instance
you launch. So normal launchers are no good for this type of thing.
They'll either launch 1 app or 5 apps but not any given combination of
those 5 apps, never mind choosing between 20.

What does a multipe choice launcher mean. It means that out of, say,
20 possible items to launch, today you might need to open:

1, 5, 11 and 17.

Tomorrow you might need 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 19.
Next time might be 1, 2, 3, 20, followed by
16 and 17.

Do you see the problem?

Dump shortcuts or paths to EXEs into Thousands of apps and with the
means to force it to stay open until you've opened all your choices -
which the AutoIt script does - you have an easy way to do this.

Cheers.
 
Just checked on OpenExpert. For some reason, download links on OE's
page appear not to work, so just search for it in Google [as one word]
and you'll find several links that you can d/l from, like download.com
Click to expand...

Again, not the right app for the job. I've used it and it's good for
what it does, but not for this.
 
Fitwell, just saw this app, but haven't tried it so don't know if it
would fit your needs.

Program Launcher 1.0

If you need to start several programs simultanously, Program Launcher
can be useful to you. Program Launcher can start 5 groups of programs
with up to 5 programs in each group, either manually or timer
controlled.
You can start *.exe files or document files, for which the standard
program is started then. You can also specify arguments for the
programs to start with. Choose from 50 icons to assign with your
groups. Program can be iconized to the system tray. Optional sound
signal on timer start.
http://www.programming.de/
http://www.programming.de/download.php
 
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