The latest release of PTFB Pro, v4.6.2.0, now preserves selections across sessions. In other words, if you select an item then quit PTFB Pro (or restart your PC), when PTFB Pro launches again the same item(s) will still be selected. This is a small change, but it should be very welcome particularly for people who like to trigger their macros using the “Run Now” button (or the Run Now shortcut they’ve defined).

To update to the latest version please visit the PTFB Pro download page: http://www.ptfbpro.com/download.shtml

From Monday 2nd Dec 2013 to Friday 6th (inclusive) we’re running a Cyberweek promotion with 50% of all our products, including PTFB Pro. So if you’d like to get a half-price license for PTFB Pro, or try out one of our other products, NOW IS THE TIME!

Use the coupon code “CYBER2013” at the checkout stage to get your discount. The position of the coupon field varies from product to product so keep an eye out for it; it is there!

As I mentioned the same coupon works for our other products too. So you can get tabbed, helpful command prompts with PromptPal, generate pleasing color schemes and try them out on a live webpage without any coding using ColorCache, and be alerted about errors and warnings on all PCs in your network with LogMeister and EventMeister, all at half price using the same coupon code.

Finally, I’m happy to report that PTFB Pro helped me to get a Black Friday / Cyberweek discount of my own. I saw a good deal on Amazon for the two recent Star Trek movies on bluray. Unfortunately I was a bit slow adding them to the shopping cart and discovered that the deal was already fully taken; I was stuck at position 103 in the queue, with little chance of getting my videos! Undeterred, I set up PTFB Pro to keep clicking away on the page every 1/3 sec exactly where the “Add to cart” button would be if someone backed out of their purchase, and went for a coffee. By the time I got back to my desk PTFB Pro had bagged the movies for me! They arrived this morning; just need to get some popcorn for a night of Trek indulgence!

Version 4.6 of PTFB Pro – now available from our Download page – adds a few handy tweaks requested by our customers:

• Immediately prior to recording screen-based macro, PTFB Pro quickly and discretely restores the previous foreground window. This is particularly useful if you want to record a macro for typing text into whatever happens to be the currently active program.
• The “Fire only if window belongs to program” field is now editable. This optional field is present on the “Identifying the Target” page of several PTFB Pro item types; it constrains the item to acting only windows that belong to the nominated program.
• PTFB Pro now recognizes some new target types in Internet Explorer v10

Find out more about boosting your productivity with PTFB Pro.
CLICK HERE to download a free 30 day trial, no strings attached. If you aren’t entirely happy simply uninstall!

It’s becoming increasingly common for people to use the font and user-interface scaling option built into Windows 7 & 8 to make everything more readable. This scaling is also known as “high dpi” or “high dots per inch” mode, but whatever you want to call it, it’s a boon if you have a high resolution monitor that makes everything on screen seem uncomfortably small, or if your vision is less than perfect. PTFB Pro has now been updated specifically for high DPI systems to make sure that it looks it best and keeps on pressing the right buttons.

If you’re running a version of PTFB Pro prior to v4.5.1.0 and are using or intend to use high DPI mode, please stop by our download page and grab the latest release. If you want to know more about high DPI mode, including a little tip on how to get older programs play well with it, please take a look at the following article in PTFB Pro’s Help Desk:

http://www.tlhouse.co.uk/supportv4/index.php?/ptfb/Knowledgebase/Article/View/66/0/ptfb-pro-and-high-dpi-on-windows-8-7-and-vista

Finally, please note that our first release with the high DPI changes – version 4.5.0.0 – had a bug in it that resulted in messed up graphics and crashes on some systems. That release was only out for a few days before we fixed it, but if you do have v4.5.0.0, please update to v4.5.1.0 (or later) as soon as possible.

This release is the first to contain an automatic check for newer versions. It’s enabled by default in fresh installs, but if you’re upgrading from a previous (4.x) version then it’s up to you whether you want to turn it on or not. When enabled, it runs shortly after PTFB Pro starts up and briefly checks with our website to see what the latest version is. If you’re already up-to-date you won’t even be aware of the version check, but if you’ve fallen behind then PTFB Pro will present a reminder. Additionally you can run the version check manually any time you want via the Options menu, regardless of whether automatic checking is enabled or not.

Here’s the full list of changes in v4.3:

• Added automatic “Check for newer version” option (Options -> Configure -> General)
• Extended workstation fail-safe relock upper limit to 300 secs (5 mins)
• OK button now default in item properties
• Fixed: occasional first-use failure of advanced target recognition on some apps when creating a single press item.
• Fix: increased time between remote desktop kickoff and target action to reduce chance of failure.

Get the new version from our download page: http://www.ptfbpro.com/download.shtml

There’s been a few bug fix releases since the last post; the latest version is v4.2.4 which fixes a fatal error that can occur with certain targets.

Changes in other recent releases include:

– Ability to recognize & handle German Outlook Security Dialog
– Fix: single press items for system tray balloons now execute notifications correctly.
– Fix: Duplicate item now works correctly on items from a shared file.
– Fix: Hotkey triggers involving right ctrl key now handled correctly

If you’re running an older version, now’s a great time to catch up and get the latest release from our download page: http://www.ptfbpro.com/download.shtml

Using ProgMon macros PTFB Pro is able to detect when a critical application enters a “not responding” state and restart it automatically. Unfortunately some programs, particularly those that aren’t mutli-threaded, may sometimes enter a non-responsive  or “hung” state briefly then recover. In reality all that’s happening is that the program is temporarily too busy doing its work to respond, but previous versions of PTFB Pro had no way of knowing that and could restart the app prematurely. Starting with version 4.2.1, you can now tweak each ProgMon macro individually to make it more tolerant of these brief apparent “hangs”.

If necessary you can still have PTFB Pro restart a program at the very first sign of a hang, but now you can also make PTFB Pro keep an eye on the program and only execute the restart if it’s been hung continuously for some time.

Get the new version from our download page: http://www.ptfbpro.com/download.shtml

This release brings two key new features that our customers have been requesting.

The first is the ability to restrict items to acting only on foreground windows – those that currently have “focus”. This might not sound like a big deal in itself, but it enables PTFB Pro to be used in a number of new ways. For example, a common source of annoyance on Windows is that different programs often use different keyboard shortcuts for what is basically the same action. This new release of PTFB Pro allows you to bind that common action in all your favorite programs to a hotkey of your choosing, so there’s no longer a need to remember the program-specific keys. One of our customers who has reduced hand function is already using this to make it easier to drive his favorite apps.

The second new feature is the ability to temporarily enable an otherwise disabled macro when certain circumstances occur. This makes it possible to chain macros together in remarkably sophisticated ways, but rather than asking them to run immediately, you simply enable them to run when the time is right.

Here is the full list of changes for this release:

• Added ability to limit items to fire only on foreground windows (those with focus).
• Added ability to temporarily enable an item from within a macro
• Added “cycle” option to Switch To Prog macro action
• Minor user interface improvements.
• Changes/Additions to the Help file.
• Note that the file format has changed with this release.

You can download the latest version here: http://www.ptfbpro.com/download.shtml