how to record keystrokes and mouse clicks

A friend of mine doesn't have a computer at home, and uses one at the Senior
Center every day. Since they're public computers, all the settings are
reset to defaults when they're rebooted, which happens automatically
overnight even if nobody does it manually. He was talking about having to
change settings to the way he likes them every day -- unlock the taskbar,
show Quick Launch, set the font face and size in WordPad, set the margins on
Page Setup, allow active content to run from local files in IE,... It amused
me to write a little app that changed all these settings to the way he liked
them, using CreateProcess to start up apps, and SendMessage to send
keystrokes and mouse clicks to them. I gave it to him so he could put it on
his flash drive and run it when he got to the Senior Center every morning.
When he watched it running, popping up app windows and changing their
settings, he asked me, "So you have something that records keystrokes, and
now you're just playing them back?"

His question sort of intrigued me. I heard of something like this a few
years ago, somebody I talked to at Yahoo chess was running long joke
messages through the chat area. He said he had something that would record
his keystrokes and save them as "macros", and play them back. Apparently
there's shareware out there that does this kind of thing, but as you might
guess from what I've already said, I write computer programs for fun, and
with shareware, somebody else gets to have all the fun. Besides that, I
never put shareware on my computer anyway, because of the possibility that
it contains viruses or worms or whatever.

I've fiddled around some, trying to figure out how to record keystrokes and
mouse clicks. First I tried to use SetCapture, but as soon as the mouse
clicks on something outside the app window that has the capture, it loses
the capture. Then I tried setting up a transparent window over the whole
screen and passing on all mouse clicks and keystrokes to the window that
would receive it if my transparent window weren't there, but that didn't
work either, because windows react differently to input if they're covered
up by another window, even if it's transparent.

So I'm thinking, I must be going at this from the wrong direction. MSDN
mentions a system message queue, and says that input messages are
distributed from that queue to the individual message queues of threads with
a GUI. It seems like, maybe I need some kind of hook that will let me
record the messages at that time, but I haven't been able to find anything
at all about the system message queue beyond that mention.

So anyway, does anybody know how I can record mouse clicks and keystrokes so
that I can play them back for things that I do frequently, rather than
having to key it all in again myself every time -- or tediously write
hard-coded apps for each task?

Thanks,
Jeff

Called macro recorder!

http://www.google.com/search?q=macro...x=&startPage=1

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience



"Jeff" <> wrote in message
news:...
> A friend of mine doesn't have a computer at home, and uses one at the
> Senior Center every day. Since they're public computers, all the settings
> are reset to defaults when they're rebooted, which happens automatically
> overnight even if nobody does it manually. He was talking about having to
> change settings to the way he likes them every day -- unlock the taskbar,
> show Quick Launch, set the font face and size in WordPad, set the margins
> on Page Setup, allow active content to run from local files in IE,... It
> amused me to write a little app that changed all these settings to the way
> he liked them, using CreateProcess to start up apps, and SendMessage to
> send keystrokes and mouse clicks to them. I gave it to him so he could
> put it on his flash drive and run it when he got to the Senior Center
> every morning. When he watched it running, popping up app windows and
> changing their settings, he asked me, "So you have something that records
> keystrokes, and now you're just playing them back?"
>
> His question sort of intrigued me. I heard of something like this a few
> years ago, somebody I talked to at Yahoo chess was running long joke
> messages through the chat area. He said he had something that would
> record his keystrokes and save them as "macros", and play them back.
> Apparently there's shareware out there that does this kind of thing, but
> as you might guess from what I've already said, I write computer programs
> for fun, and with shareware, somebody else gets to have all the fun.
> Besides that, I never put shareware on my computer anyway, because of the
> possibility that it contains viruses or worms or whatever.
>
> I've fiddled around some, trying to figure out how to record keystrokes
> and mouse clicks. First I tried to use SetCapture, but as soon as the
> mouse clicks on something outside the app window that has the capture, it
> loses the capture. Then I tried setting up a transparent window over the
> whole screen and passing on all mouse clicks and keystrokes to the window
> that would receive it if my transparent window weren't there, but that
> didn't work either, because windows react differently to input if they're
> covered up by another window, even if it's transparent.
>
> So I'm thinking, I must be going at this from the wrong direction. MSDN
> mentions a system message queue, and says that input messages are
> distributed from that queue to the individual message queues of threads
> with a GUI. It seems like, maybe I need some kind of hook that will let
> me record the messages at that time, but I haven't been able to find
> anything at all about the system message queue beyond that mention.
>
> So anyway, does anybody know how I can record mouse clicks and keystrokes
> so that I can play them back for things that I do frequently, rather than
> having to key it all in again myself every time -- or tediously write
> hard-coded apps for each task?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>
>

Jeff wrote:
> A friend of mine doesn't have a computer at home, and uses one at the
> Senior Center every day. Since they're public computers, all the
> settings are reset to defaults when they're rebooted, which happens
> automatically overnight even if nobody does it manually. He was talking
> about having to change settings to the way he likes them every day --
> unlock the taskbar, show Quick Launch, set the font face and size in
> WordPad, set the margins on Page Setup, allow active content to run from
> local files in IE,... It amused me to write a little app that changed
> all these settings to the way he liked them, using CreateProcess to
> start up apps, and SendMessage to send keystrokes and mouse clicks to
> them. I gave it to him so he could put it on his flash drive and run it
> when he got to the Senior Center every morning. When he watched it
> running, popping up app windows and changing their settings, he asked
> me, "So you have something that records keystrokes, and now you're just
> playing them back?"
>
> His question sort of intrigued me. I heard of something like this a few
> years ago, somebody I talked to at Yahoo chess was running long joke
> messages through the chat area. He said he had something that would
> record his keystrokes and save them as "macros", and play them back.
> Apparently there's shareware out there that does this kind of thing, but
> as you might guess from what I've already said, I write computer
> programs for fun, and with shareware, somebody else gets to have all the
> fun. Besides that, I never put shareware on my computer anyway, because
> of the possibility that it contains viruses or worms or whatever.
>
> I've fiddled around some, trying to figure out how to record keystrokes
> and mouse clicks. First I tried to use SetCapture, but as soon as the
> mouse clicks on something outside the app window that has the capture,
> it loses the capture. Then I tried setting up a transparent window over
> the whole screen and passing on all mouse clicks and keystrokes to the
> window that would receive it if my transparent window weren't there, but
> that didn't work either, because windows react differently to input if
> they're covered up by another window, even if it's transparent.
>
> So I'm thinking, I must be going at this from the wrong direction. MSDN
> mentions a system message queue, and says that input messages are
> distributed from that queue to the individual message queues of threads
> with a GUI. It seems like, maybe I need some kind of hook that will let
> me record the messages at that time, but I haven't been able to find
> anything at all about the system message queue beyond that mention.
>
> So anyway, does anybody know how I can record mouse clicks and
> keystrokes so that I can play them back for things that I do frequently,
> rather than having to key it all in again myself every time -- or
> tediously write hard-coded apps for each task?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>
>


Jeff, as well as Richard's suggestion you might find this site
interesting...

http://www.codeproject.com/

"Jeff" <> wrote in message
news:...
>A friend of mine doesn't have a computer at home, and uses one at the
>Senior Center every day. Since they're public computers, all the settings
>are reset to defaults when they're rebooted, which happens automatically
>overnight even if nobody does it manually. He was talking about having to
>change settings to the way he likes them every day -- unlock the taskbar,
>show Quick Launch, set the font face and size in WordPad, set the margins
>on Page Setup, allow active content to run from local files in IE,... It
>amused me to write a little app that changed all these settings to the way
>he liked them, using CreateProcess to start up apps, and SendMessage to
>send keystrokes and mouse clicks to them. I gave it to him so he could put
>it on his flash drive and run it when he got to the Senior Center every
>morning. When he watched it running, popping up app windows and changing
>their settings, he asked me, "So you have something that records
>keystrokes, and now you're just playing them back?"
>
> His question sort of intrigued me. I heard of something like this a few
> years ago, somebody I talked to at Yahoo chess was running long joke
> messages through the chat area. He said he had something that would
> record his keystrokes and save them as "macros", and play them back.
> Apparently there's shareware out there that does this kind of thing, but
> as you might guess from what I've already said, I write computer programs
> for fun, and with shareware, somebody else gets to have all the fun.
> Besides that, I never put shareware on my computer anyway, because of the
> possibility that it contains viruses or worms or whatever.
>
> I've fiddled around some, trying to figure out how to record keystrokes
> and mouse clicks. First I tried to use SetCapture, but as soon as the
> mouse clicks on something outside the app window that has the capture, it
> loses the capture. Then I tried setting up a transparent window over the
> whole screen and passing on all mouse clicks and keystrokes to the window
> that would receive it if my transparent window weren't there, but that
> didn't work either, because windows react differently to input if they're
> covered up by another window, even if it's transparent.
>
> So I'm thinking, I must be going at this from the wrong direction. MSDN
> mentions a system message queue, and says that input messages are
> distributed from that queue to the individual message queues of threads
> with a GUI. It seems like, maybe I need some kind of hook that will let
> me record the messages at that time, but I haven't been able to find
> anything at all about the system message queue beyond that mention.
>
> So anyway, does anybody know how I can record mouse clicks and keystrokes
> so that I can play them back for things that I do frequently, rather than
> having to key it all in again myself every time -- or tediously write
> hard-coded apps for each task?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>
>

Here's an interesting hardware gadget. It only records
keystrokes though.

http://www.thumbsupuk.com/products/U...prodid=373&cc=

Check out 'ProteMac KeyBag' (http://www.actymac.com/ProteMac_KeyBag/).
It must be what you are looking for. The tool records all the keystrokes
typed in any application and runs in a hidden mode. I use it to know if
others do anything with my computer

Sorry, forgot to tell you it's for Mac OS only


--
Skyscraper
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com