Recording, Low Level Mode

Select the Configure/Recording menu item to display the Configure Recording dialog.

This dialog box allows you to change the way WinTask records your actions in Recording mode.

By default, all user actions are recorded in an object-oriented manner. For instance, no matter how you select a menu item (mouse click, shortcut, <Alt> and arrow), the generated code is the same: a ChooseMenu function is recorded. Within some applications, this intelligent recording does not work correctly. When Low level Recording is selected, WinTask records keyboard and mouse actions exactly as they are performed.

The following example clarifies the difference between the two recording modes.
The actions to be recorded are:

In normal Recording mode (the default) :

 

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Edit|Untitled - Notepad|1",1)

SendKeys("aaaaa")

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Notepad|Untitled - Notepad",1)

ChooseMenu(Normal,"&File|E&xit")

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|#32770|Notepad",1)

Click(Button,"&No")

When the option Low level Recording is used :

 

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Edit|Untitled - Notepad|1",1)

SendKeys("aaaaa")

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Edit|Untitled - Notepad|1",1, NoActivate)

ClickMouse(Left,Down,33,38)

ClickMouse(Left,Up,33,38)

ClickMouse(Left,Down,62,180)

ClickMouse(Left,Up,62,180)

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Button|&Yes",1, NoActivate)

SendKeys("<Tab>")

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Button|&No",1, NoActivate)

SendKeys("<Enter>")

In this low level Recording, you can choose to record every pause made by the user between his actions. Check the option Insert Pause statements. To avoid generating a script with many Pause statements, indicate that these statements must be generated only if the user has paused for xxx ticks (a tick is about 1/100 of a second). The default value for the Minimum wait time before inserting field is 100 ticks.

In Recording mode, mouse moves are recorded only when a mouse button has been pressed. If you check the option Record all mouse moves, any mouse move will be recorded. Note that this causes many lines to be recorded in the script.

To summarize, USE LOW LEVEL RECORDING ONLY IF your script does not replay correctly against a specific application. When normal Recording works, use it.

 

The Enable Insert Lines checkbox allows to use a hot-key to open a dialog while Recording where you can type some lines for an insertion into the script. This can be used, for instance, to insert a call to a predefined procedure. See Insert lines into the script. The button Define hot key allows to change the default keyboard shortcut that opens the Insert Lines dialog. The keyboard shortcut is enabled only if the WinTask floating toolbar is not displayed during Recording mode (if the WinTask floating toolbar is displayed, click its last icon to insert lines into the script).

The Ask for launching an application checkbox controls whether the dialog box "What do you want to start before recording" is displayed when Recording mode is launched.

If the checkbox Unicode encoding for newly created scripts is checked, next time you create a new script and record actions in it, the generated code is Unicode (instead of ANSI). This option should be be used only with a non-European or not-US Windows language/keyboard.

Check the last checkbox Encrypt web passwords to generate encrypted strings when text is typed in a web password field.