Discriminate against mice… use AutoHotkey

Let’s face it, mice are slow. Mice are very slow. And mice cause bad things to happen to your wrist.

Keyboards, on the other hand, are fast. And you barely have to move to get things done on them.

Discriminate against mice. Use AutoHotkey.

AutoHotkey is a free utility which allows you to define global hotkeys to do all sorts of nifty things. Using AutoHotkey scripts (which are outrageously easy to write) you can script everything from iTunes to your automated tests. For example, I currently have my system setup so that when I press Windows-G, a new browser window is opened and sent to Google. When I hit Windows-F9, a random image is selected from a specific folder and set as my Windows background. When I hit Windows-T, the automated test suite for the current product I’m testing is executed.

Time savings? Yep. Less stress on your wrist? Absolutely. Big kewlness factor? Booyah.

Visit AutoHotkey’s web site to download the utility. You can also visit the message board for free scripts which do all sorts of nice things. For example, I’ve found this iTunes script to be quite useful.