Ability to choose which input to block

Rain · Post by **Rain** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:03 pm

Hi Marcus,

I think youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re a genius in what you do and I really like all the improvements, addition and the awesome forum support you give all of us.
What I was wondering, is it possible to block only mouse inputs or only keyboard inputs? The way it stands now, if I want to block mouse inputs I have to also block all keyboard inputs. It would be nice to be able to choose which one to block. Is that something that can be added to the whish list?

Thank you for your time.

Rain

Rain · Post by **Rain** » Fri May 04, 2007 6:17 pm

Hi Marcus,

IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m kind of curious if this even possible?

Rain

jpuziano · Post by **jpuziano** » Fri May 04, 2007 7:06 pm

Hi Marcus,

I am curious as well... possible?

To further this along, can anyone out there think of scenarios where it would be very useful to be able to block only keyboard or only mouse input? If so, please post them here...

Thanks

Bob Hansen · Post by **Bob Hansen** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:57 pm

scenarios where it would be very useful to be able to block only keyboard or only mouse input?

Kiosk, slide show presentation

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Mon May 07, 2007 7:44 am

Rain wrote:Hi Marcus,

IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m kind of curious if this even possible?

Rain

Don't know off the top of my head. When I get a chance I'll see if I can find out. I suspect it probably is, but until I get the hood off of Windows, open up the Win32 API spec and start tinkering, it is rather difficult to say.

jpuziano · Post by **jpuziano** » Mon May 07, 2007 3:15 pm

Hi Marcus,

mtettmar wrote:until I get the hood off of Windows, open up the Win32 API spec and start tinkering, it is rather difficult to say.

Hood? I thought they called it a Bonnet in England?

Seriously though, good things happen when you start tinkering so... tinker away.

Hi Bob,

Kiosk Mode is an interesting capability of IE that I discovered by reading posts in these forums (search for kiosk). I can imagine it would very useful to be able to run a slideshow presentation on a PC under the control of a macro that could block all keyboard input... but allow the user control of the slideshow via mouse only. As far as I know, Kiosk Mode can only be shut down using the keyboard: Ctrl+W Close (same as Alt+F4) so if you block all keyboard input, those are blocked and the user would not be able to escape Kiosk Mode (short of powering down the box... and in that case, you'd have it protected on startup).

Something *REALLY* handy here would be if the OnEvent>KEY_DOWN command could still be used to watch for some secret CTRL-ALT-letter combination of keys being pressed. In other words, all keyboard input is blocked *EXCEPT* for any specific keys/modifier keys we are watching for using OnEvent>KEY_DOWN. When the special key combination is detected, the macro could re-enable keyboard input to allow the operator access. Hitting the secret key-combination again could re-enable keyboard blocking.

Let's say you set the secret unlock key combination to CTRL-ALT-U. Yes, its possible that someone fumbling at the keyboard might stumble upon the right key combination by accident. Or perhaps they see you hit some keys to get access... so after you leave, they try every combination of CTRL, SHIFT, ALT with every key. With enough determination, they would be able to find your secret key combination through trial and error.

Not a problem though, just write the macro to watch for two or three keys instead and require that all three key combinations be struck and released within a 5 second window. Using tricks like this could make it virtually impossible for anyone to find the combination.

Marcus, if this functionality is possible and you add it, I promise to post an example macro demoing the capability... that is if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Thanks Bob, excellent example!

Does anyone else have any other scenarios where the ability to block either keyboard *OR* mouse input separately would be useful?

Bob Hansen · Post by **Bob Hansen** » Mon May 07, 2007 4:08 pm

You may often want everything locked up while you are running a macro.

Could be doing anything that takes time, and want to prevent anyone from interrupting, changing focus, etc. Might be good code to include at beginning of many macros.

Rain · Post by **Rain** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:48 pm

Marcus, I'm wondering if you and your team had time to further investigate this to see if this is even possible