bring up app to front

[lee griggs]

I have a gesture tap mapped to all my apps that opens them up.

To do this I right clicked on the desktop shortcut and typed a keyboard shortcut into the run part of the properties.

By accident I tapped my photoshop open app gesture whilst photoshop was already open and voila photoshop appears in front of me without having to alt tab to it!

However it seems this only works with photoshop because windows only opens up one version of photoshop.

My question is, is it possible to tell windows to only open one copy of an app so that I can get rid of alt tab and just have tap gestures to bring up all my apps. It would be sooo cool!

Im not sure if it would be possible with windows explorer as that uses win-e and that always brings up multiple windows.

I suppose I want this to work in a similar way to pressing the email button on a traditional microsoft keyboard, but with all of my apps.

any ideas?

cheers,
lee

[ivanw]

Sure, but you have work to do for this to happen

It's my understanding that this trait is each application responsibility.

But the way to achieve the result goes through the discovery of an already running instance. And this can be done either by a new process instance that would wake the old one and exit or by some launcher to do this same job for those which don't care.

This is the case for hotkeys and other of the kind...

Just a suggestion now, you can run an AutoHotkey script that would check the situation when you send some keystrokes as a result of a gesture.

The script would look like this:

Code: Select all

F17::
Process, Exist, Notepad.exe
if %ErrorLevel% = 0 {
 Run, Notepad.exe
}
return


[lee griggs]

cheers Ivan! will have a play

[jmadison]

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I've found a program that I find immensely useful while using my touchstream in windows: Launchy

http://www.launchy.net/

I changed the default HotKey to Alt-L, then I mapped a two-handed gesture (three fingers on each hand) to produce Alt-L.

So, now, to launch an application, I tap three fingers on both hands, then begin typing the name of the app. It usually finds the app I want in 2-3 letters. I love it, and I miss it when using my TS on someone else's computer.

Like I said, it's not exactly what you're looking for, but I have found it to be a great little launcher, so I figured I'd point it out.

[lee griggs]

do you know if launchy would bring the app to the front if it was already launched?

cheers,
lee

[ivanw]

It looks like Launchy makes no process scanning at all.

For example, it launches a notepad.exe everytime you ask for one.

However, for some smarter processes, you get what you expect as they do this job themselves. They make sure there is only a single instance of themselves running at any single time (the singleton behavior).

Also, Hotkeys does exactly what you're looking for.