Toolbar Creator - v. 2.2 beta available for download!

@surfaceproartist:
I’ve learned from previous things I’ve uploaded that sharing a version with a few bugs is not good business... So I’ll solve all the bugs I can find before releasing it, and will then be very happy if you can help find any other bug! But all the main functions are working so far! Apart from the new functions I mentioned before, I also added a function to change the position of the toolbar when the screen is rotated to make sure it stays in the visible area (i.e. depending on where you use the toolbar, you can currently lose it off the screen when you change the screen orientation, and need to use the item in the tray menu to bring it back).

@stoneseeker:
Thanks. I think it’s pretty cool! You seem to have settled on a pretty efficient setup with the Wacom right-click menu (and I think ModLock?) so I’m not sure how this can fit in your workflow. But in my hands it’s working very well and I especially like that I can switch toolbar very quickly when changing program.

@reloaded:

I’m glad you finally found how to make it work for you. It’s good to know that on high res screens a value of 40 is too small. Thanks for the info.

1) To associate a program to your toolbar: If you go in the Options, at the bottom of the “Active toolbar settings” tab you can select the program (i.e. Photoshop) to which you want to associate your toolbar. This is not necessary but it can increase the reliability of the toolbar. Photoshop is available in the dropdown list, while you can set ZBrush by using the Drag Me button.

2) Wow, you really dug into the code! How the hell did you find line 818?!!!
Indeed, I removed the mouse buttons from the list because registering them was problematic (it actually worked well with a mouse, but was just really bad with a stylus). It looks like you’re trying to do two things:

- remap the pen buttons. I’m not sure much can be done here if you’re using an N-Trig device (hopefully they will soon realize how much not being able to remap the buttons is hurting them and will eventually release the driver/program that has been mentioned in the SP3 forum). In any case, your situation is not clear. Are you saying that you have one or two buttons? And what are they set to do? And what do you want them to do?

- use the pen in some way to modify the brush opacity. I’ve discussed this issue with stoneseeker in another thread. Have you tried using the scrubby slider?
Change Opacity Of Your Active Layer With The Push Of A Button
Or maybe you can try small scripts that I had prepared earlier. The first one is just a demonstration, the second will probably be very tiny on your screen but it shows what could be done by adding a button on Toolbar Creator:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/art...own-native-photoshop-panels-3.html#post390436
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/art...own-native-photoshop-panels-3.html#post390542​

3) I can show you how to add predefined functions, no problem. But I’m just not sure what you are looking for is possible at all. If the suggestions above don't work for you, I can certainly show you how to include mouse buttons in hotkeys.

4) Nice icons! If you are set on your icons, if you want you could eventually send them to me so that I can include them in the zip file. This way you wouldn’t have to transfer your icons every time you update Toolbar Creator. Just a thought.

 

Well it really helped with your responses to change my mindset of how to use it. Now that I understand it has to be used with the pen, and the idea behind toggle buttons using as modifier keys, plus how mobile the palette is on the screen, it all makes sense.

That is really neat about associating the programs! I will definitely check that out!

As far as the mouse buttons:

-I am absolutely NOT trying to re map the pen buttons on the Ntrig device. My understanding is that those are not accessible, but might be in the future through either Ntrig or microsoft drivers. All of my information comes from Surfaceproartist. That dude is seriously in touch with everything Surface Pro.


-In that article he does describe how you can use "number" shortcuts to adjust opacity of a selected tool. That is what I was describing in the previous post. Num 1=10%, Num 2 =20%, etc. Unfortunately if you use "numbers" I would have to set them up as keys in the toolbar, which takes up precious buttons, or even with your new one will make the palette to big and complex to have individual button numbers just for opacity.

You can indeed also hover the cursor over a slider (photoshop CS6 responds a little different from photoshop elements). However on a high res screen photoshop UI is tiny. So that is why I would like to attach it to a shortcut. The only shortcuts aside from numbers are as follows in windows

1) Enter Key, Up Arrow, Enter Key - this adjusts the opacity up by one step and would be tedious even if I could figure out how to do it as a hotkey combo. Currently the hotkey recorder in the Toolbar Creator won't let me record that action.
2) Alt + Shift + Right Mouse, then move the cursor up and down on the screen with those modifiers pressed and the opacity will dynamically adjust. This is probably the best option.

The problem with the Ntrig Pen is the way "right click" works. It doesn't read the same way as a mouse. It seems like its sending the action multiple times, or Photoshop is getting confused since the pen has to "touch" the surface while right click on the pen is depressed (right click is a default Ntrig Pen button). What it needs to be is a "hover click", but that is not available as a pen option yet on Ntrig in order to be used as modifier for the opacity action.

So really what I'm trying to do is eliminate the need for a mouse or any external device to send the "proper" mouse click message through. I will also need access to the "middle mouse button" for other programs,which is absolutely not available on the Ntrig pen.

I'll look into the adobe configurator, but I would definitely appreciate the info on how to include mouse hotkeys. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need that.

Thanks for the compliments on the icons. I copied the "style" from someone ArtDock keys, but I'm recreating them all at a more scalable resolution for the SP3 and converting to .ico format. I'm happy to share them, after I get them done for the other programs.

I'm sure there is some way to send private messages on this if everyone is getting tired of my clutter for answers back to the specifics of some of these. I really hope I'm not turning people off of your thread. This tool is great and having the creator actively involved on a thread is pretty awesome.

 

@lblb - Once again, thank you very much for all your work on this and your other tools. Do you have a website or blog where users can help contribute through donations?
- I've only had a short time with your tool, but it works great Just curious if there is a way to rotate the tool bar horizontally? Not a big deal, but I've gotten used to having the Modlock tool bar along the top right portion of my screen (most of the programs I use tend not to have anything useful in this area)

@reloaded - Your Q&A between lblb is helpful to see how other users use the tool and opens up other ways to utilize the interface. Seems like we are using similar programs, so I appreciate the back and forth

 

@reloaded, keep your posts coming! They're very illuminating.

 

Hi,

I’m at work so this will be short. I’ll come back later to address the rest of the questions.

@thewish:
- No website or blog, just happy to help (and learn how to program through all the user requests).
- For now, you can’t put the toolbar horizontally. Not that I want to keep on talking about the new version that is not yet available, but in that one you can give it any configuration you want on a 10 button x 10 button canvas so you will be able to make it horizontal if you want.

@reloaded:
- I’ll discuss later the more complex stuff, including how to include your own complex series of hotkeys.
- We can certainly keep the discussion here for now, although maybe going for PM's may become better if we get to the nitty gritty and troubleshooting of more complex hotkeys.
- In the Adobe Configurator thread, I wasn't talking about using Adobe Configurator. In the two posts that I linked to, there are two short programs that I posted that do the equivalent of what you mentioned: click enter, then modify the value in the opacity textbox. Do they work for you? Keep in mind that these were just test versions and I didn’t try to optimize them
- For now, you could always go on the last tab of the Options and modify the Shortcuts menu with entries for brightness 10%, 20%, 30% etc and have these menu items send the hotkeys 1, 2, 3 etc. You can launch this menu from the main menu or, perhaps more conveniently, you can set any button on the toolbar to Type 5 – Predefined then select “Show Shortcuts Menu” in the list of presets. This way, this completely configurable menu becomes available in one click on any button.
- Alternatively, if you don’t want to build a menu like that every time, I could include something like a “Photoshop Menu” in the predefined functions that would include the brightness shortcuts and/or any other shortcut that you think could be generally useful. If that's of any interest, just tell me what you think such a menu could contain, as I am not an artist and rarely ever use Photoshop.


Edit: I just discovered a small bug that I'll try to correct for the new version. When you add entries to the Shortcuts menu, the new entry is not selected right after creation. So make sure, if you add new menu entries, to select the newly created menu item before trying to change the hotkey.

 

OK cool. Thanks guys. I'm glad I'm not cluttering this too badly. I agree with the thewish, if there is some way we can help support for all this, well...support.

It looks like the Adobe Configurator opens new panels, which I would like to just keep everything in the one toolbar. Unless I'm misunderstanding.

I did find a work around for the opacity. I used a slider button with the up set to 7 and the down to 3, and the right click (works fine on the tool bar, just not a mod in PS6) to bring back to 9. Unfortunately the key for 100% opacity is 00 which it wont let me enter as a hotkey entry. But 9 gets back close enough and if I need I can squint and use the slider in PS.

So I'm pretty set up without needing a keyboard or external device almost. I just need to be able to set up mouse clicks as hotkeys (specifically for 3DS Max) and I'll be set.

I know there was some discussion on how to transfer icons to newer versions, and I noticed some sort of "updater.exe" in the folders. So I will probably have questions there also again. Would like to be able to do the work myself, but I will indeed share all my icons if people are interested. Here is what it looks like currently. I have several sliders set up to conserve buttons.

 

Hey reloaded,

I think we posted at the same time so I just want to make sure that you saw my previous post. By the way, if you want I could possibly add a preset slider button that would just send numbers from 1 to 00. Or you could use the menu option I mention above. Or the slider programs that I shared in the other thread allow you much better control of opacity, including any preset value.


Edit: By the way, you can also show the Shortcuts menu through a right-click preset on any button.

 

Hey reloaded,

Sorry, I'm very busy these days and don't have time to be around here.

Your toolbar looks great! I'll show you how to add mouseclicks and define your own more complex hotkeys when I have time. For now, if what you want is to send 00 (to get to 100% opacity), go in the Files\Toolbars\ subfolder and open the .ini file for your toolbar in a text editor. After the general settings at the top you will see that each button has its own multiple settings. The three buttons at the top of the toolbar are buttons 30-32, the buttons in the first column are 1-10 and in the second 11-20. To assign 00 to a right-click action, go to the section for that button number (let's say the number is 20) and at the bottom of that section find the following keys and set them this way:

Button20_RT_Hotkey = {0}{0}
Button20_RT_Hotkey_Long = 00

Save the file, then relaunch the toolbar.

By the way, have you had time to explore the other opacity options I mentioned above (in a menu, or using the scripts from the other thread)?

 

I am trying this on my thinkpad yoga...I love it.

Am I using it wrong...or does all the adjustmenst I make in the customizations and setting reset everytime I exit the toolbar?

How do I get it to remember my preferences?

 

lblb, thanks for all your replies. We are in the middle of a move, so I apologize for the time between my posts.

I haven't had a chance to try the menu option from post 45:

"- For now, you could always go on the last tab of the Options and modify the Shortcuts menu with entries for brightness 10%, 20%, 30% etc and have these menu items send the hotkeys 1, 2, 3 etc. You can launch this menu from the main menu or, perhaps more conveniently, you can set any button on the toolbar to Type 5 – Predefined then select “Show Shortcuts Menu” in the list of presets. This way, this completely configurable menu becomes available in one click on any button."

I'm sure I will have questions on this. I tried playing with shortcuts earlier and couldn't really figure out how to make them work. If I have the problem again, I'll clip screenshots of what I'm doing step by step so it will be easy to identify where I'm going wrong. If this works that would be pretty great and seems like I could use it for other things.

As far as making a pre defined Photoshop Menu, I would prefer to keep this in the land of user customization for your sake. If I requested a specific menu, chances a really good that wouldn't work for everyone or that I would want to change it somewhere down the line. As I always say, people never notice what you've done, they notice what you haven't done, and that is often the case with custom, locked menus or UI.

On post 47 are you suggesting I can make a slider that will actually roll through the numbers from 1 to 00?! Or just go from 1 on bottom and skip to 00 on top? If it's the former and it can actually send defined numbers (2,3,4, etc) from 1 to 00 that would be perfect! I must just be missing how to do it. It seems like there are only two entries available for the slider.

I'll also try your suggestion from post #48 (thanks for the compliments). That one seems like it will get me mostly where I need to go with the opacity. If I save the .ini file, I don't need to recompile a new .exe from the .ahk do I? It's strange because when I try to run the Your Toolbar.ahk I get a line error at 1766, but the provided .exe works fine.

Really looking forward to hearing how to add mouse clicks. Sort of waiting on that to complete the menus since there is no "middle mouse" button options with the Ntrig pen, and right click you have to click the screen with the pen which causes issues in a several pieces of software. This is turning out to be seriously cool though.

Violet182, thats really strange you are having difficulty with it remembering your changes. I haven't experienced that. Wonder what might be happening.