First start
On the first start you are firstly asked if you want to enable searching for updates. As the application is still in the pre alpha, i highly recommend to enable this option, because as there are many bugs currently there will be a lot of patches.
After that you are required to give the path to your AutoIt installtion directory. Most likely it will be C:\Program Files (x86)\AutoIt3.
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After hitting Ok the IDE is ready to use.
The project selection
On startup the project selection screen will appear.
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Now you can either select one of your last opend projects using a double click, or open an exsisting project .au3proj file. If you want to create a new project just click the button "New project", and the new project screen appears:
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Now you can select a template from the list, enter a name and a directory and create the project.
The project inspector
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On the left side (by default, you can change this in the options tab on the menu) you can find the project inspector. This is where you handle the project files. Double clicking on a file will open the file. Below the file view you got a view options. You can add or delete files from the project using those two buttons. If you have more than one formular, you can select which one should be the main formular (the when the main formular closes, the app closes) and you can enter the project settings using the "Settings" button (more about those later).
The formular editor
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The formular editor is a WYSIWYG GUI editor for Automate Studio projects. To add controls to the formular just open the toolbox by klicking on it (in the bootom left corner), and a list of available controls will appear.
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Now select an element from this list, and click on the formular where you want to place it. If you press the mouse key and drag the mouse you can also set the size of the control directly on creation.
On the right side (you can also switch this on the options) you have the object inspector. Using the object inspector you can change the properties of your controls. On the "Events" Tab you can select a function which will be called when this event occours. If there is no function selected using double click (or selecting New... from the dropdown list) you can create a new function as eventhandler.
Using shift click you can select multiple controls and edit them all by once.
At the OnClose event of the main form a variable $PerformClose is available. Set it to False to stop the break of the main loop, and keep the programm still running in the background.
In the bottom right corner you can find the position picker. The gray rectangel represents your screen and the white one inside your GUI position. Just select the position you want for your GUI by clicking on the location on the object.
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The script editor
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The script editor is a text editor with many features for better development. It contains a code completion, which can be entered by Ctrl+Space, or you can choose to let it open automatically while typing in the options. On Ctrl+Click on functions or variables you can jump to their definition, even if they are in other files. If the caret hovers on a function a tooltip will appear containing information about the function. The summary the tooltip displays can be added for UDF's using Automate Studios doc comments. Simply write the summary in comments starting with * on top of the UDF and it will be displayed as summary for the tooltip:
Code:
;* Summary: example function
Func FuncName()
;...
EndFunc
On the (default) right you can see the code explorer.
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It displays all includes, functions and variables defined in this document. Double clicking on any item will jump to the definition.
If you got a hell lot of items in the explorer it may slow down the IDE, than just close it using the x button. (But this would require about 500+ items).
Compile and Run
If you want to build your project or just do a run in the IDE you can find this in the menu on the item "Run", or just use the speedbuttons in the toolbar
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Select the architecture in the combobox and hit the green arrow button, F5 or the Run item in the menu to start your project inside the IDE. All ConsoleWrite outputs will be displayed in the outputbox on the bottom of the IDE ConsoleRead is currently not possible to use inside the IDE. Hit Ctrl+B or the menu item "Build" to compile your project into an .exe.
Multiple Views
Automate Studio supports using multiple views and windows.
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The Mainwindow can hold up to 4 views. To open a view simply click one of the buttons with the two blue rectangles on the top right corner above the editor. The image shows How the new view will be located.
Every view has two buttons. On the right the one with the blue arrow is used to move the current editor of this view to an other view. On the left with the orange folder is to open a file in this view. To open a new window you can either use the menu item "File->New editor window", or select in the move button of the current editor the item "New Window".
Project settings
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As mentioned earlier you can access the project settings by clicking the "Settings" button in the Project inspector. In the project settings you can change the name of the Project, its directory and the kind of application (GUI, NoConsole, Console) in the "General" tab. The "Compiler" tab contains all the settings for the creation of the .exe as icon, compression and the output file. At the "Run parameter" tab you can add parameters to the list, which will be given to the interpreter to run your app using these parameters. At the "Version" tab you can add information about your app like the version, the company, product name, etc. which will be compiled into the .exe.
Scripteditor options
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By clicking "Options->Scripteditor options" menu you can access the editor options. There you can customize the appearance of the scripteditor as well as editing the keywords and default functions of the AutoIt language. If you want to add a codetemplate to the completion just add it as a keyword to the keywords tab. Example:
Code:
if {Condition} Then
if the user selects this as completion, the editor will automatically select the {Condition} so he can replace it withou having to navigate to it
Form editor options
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As well as for the scripteditor you can also access the formularedtor options through the options tab in the menu. There you can set a few things about the formeditor.
If the formeditor is pretty slow (this occurs when the forms are gettring pretty big) deactivate the grid. The grid takes a lot of performance (may be fixed soon). If it is still to slow you can also deactivate "Double buffer". Than you might get graphical bugs, but it will get faster.
Addtional options
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"Options->Other". These options are not logically separated from the others, in fact it contains some options for the scripteditor as well as for the formular editor. I put them all together in a separate form because it was easier to write. This may get changed soon, but im pretty lazy and it works kinda good right now.
In this window you can change
1. the Language.
2. The amount of undo steps for both formular editor and scripteditor.
3. The amount of elements remebered for the completion (the higher the more time it takes for the completion to show up)
4. The automatic appearance of the completion
5. If the editor completion should show variables and functions from included files
6. The border size of the windows (the amount of pixels added to the formular size to get the real size of the window)
7. If the IDE should search for updates on startup.
Updates
On first startup the IDE asks if you want to search for updates on startup. If you want to search for updates manually simply click "Tools->Search for updates"
Project templates
The templates for new projects are located in the "Presets" folder of the installation directory. It's constructed after the following structure:
Every template is represented as a folder in the Presets directory. The name of the folder is also the name of the template e.g. GUIApp.
This folder has to contain one .apr file, an AutoIt file which will be executed as main program.
The folder might contain other AutoIt (.au3, .afm) files which are used by the project as well. A Filelist.txt is reqired which contains all filenames (and subpaths if they are in other directories), one filename per line. Every file which is not contained in the FileList.txt will be ignored.
You can also add an Icon.png file, which contains the icon to be shown in the template selection. This file is not mandatory.
The information about the project are defined in a PresetInfo.txt as Key-Value-Pairs.
An example:
Code:
MainFile=MainFile.apr //The .apr main program
OpendFile=Form1.afm //files that shall be opend at the first start
OpendFile=Form1.au3
FocusedFile=0 // The current focused file, 0 is the first opendfile in this document
AppType=GUI // the application kind, GUI, NoConsole, Console
MainForm=Form1.afm // If you have selected GUI as AppType this is the formular thad closing will shut down the main loop
// Comments are only for demonstration and shall never occour in a PresetInfo.txt
