If you have ever been in a situation in which you needed something clicked every couple seconds and did not want to expose your hand to crippling carpal tunnel symptoms, you may have benefited from Free Mouse Auto Clicker, which automatically single or double clicks wherever the cursor is on the screen. You can use it to keep a window at the top, force a dialogue to stay active while you are away, or any number of other tasks. You can get started with this handy, free little program by following this link to its download page. It is an extremely small download, and after whizzing through the installation process you should be looking at a little window with a series of options you can set to get the program operating for you.

You will probably only need to access one of the options on this window in order to get the program working on your tasks. That is the option in the upper right of the window, titled Click Interval. Here you can select how often you need Free Mouse Auto Clicker to click, wherever the cursor may be. If you do need to utilize the other features they are simple and need little introduction. Click HotKey allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for starting or stopping the program – it can be important if your click interval is around every second or less. The Click Options settings allow you to choose which button on the mouse is being activated and whether it is a single click or a double click each time.

To go a little bit further in automating your system, another small, free program that might be of assistance called Instant File Opener allows you to open a group of files at the same time. It can be handy if you have several files associated with a common task that you would like opened together each time but don’t want to write a batch file for the process.

You can download this program here, and it too features a quick download and light install. At first glance the interface may seem a bit confusing, but it is actually simple enough once you spend a little time working with the program. Simply click the icons on the toolbar to choose the various files you want to open as a set – any kind of file should work, and you can even include URLs in your lists. Once your list is completed, simply save the list to an easily accessed part of your computer. Track it down, click on the list file, and watch your screen populate with the files you put together.

Using your computer is not always easy. By automating a few simple tasks you take a big step towards simplifying your everyday relationship with your machine.

The documentation gives a thorough introduction to AutoIt and explains most features including some tutorials to get you started. This might be not that easy for someone who never coded before but everyone else should feel right at home with this basic like language.

The forum is the place to learn more and ask questions about the tool. It has a whole subforum where users submit their autoscripts and everyone is able to use them on his own computer. This means that even though you do not code tasks on your own you can still use many by simply downloading the from the forums.

Would not it be great if all this could be done with the click of a mouse button ? Ok, some more clicks but still a lot less than performing all those tasks by hand one after another. You will have to record the task(s) once which simply involves starting the extension and moving, typing and writing exactly as you always do. Selenium records all action and you are able to save it afterwards.

You´ll unfortunatly have to load it whenever you want to replay the task. It therefor makes only sense to me to record and save tasks that involve lots of writing, moving and clicking. Maybe there is a way to store them in your Bookmarks toolbar but I have not found a way to do so. It would be awesome if this would be possible. (Bare with me, I´am using the extension for 10 minutes..)

Seleniums main purpose is web application testing. It (not the firefox extension of course) runs in most popular browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Instead of looking at / or testing webpages in different browsers you record the task once and play it in every browser afterwards.
Take a look at a presentation video of selenium ide that shows how to record and play tasks.