Asynchronous "highlight target" possible?

Questions & Suggestions
1

I recently discovered the "Highlight Target" action and like its usefulness. However, I noticed that you have to wait until the highlight disappears before the next action can execute. If find that this "wait period" slows things down so I'm wondering if there's a way to use the "highlight target" somehow without having to wait for it to finish.

If not, would the creator consider this on a future update?

Thanks

2

You can run any action asynchronously if you put it in a separate macro and call the macro with the Execute Macro action and check the option for "Run Asynchronously". I do this all the time. For example I do it with the Speak Text action so that doesn't slow me down either.

2 Likes
3

Wow, I didn't know that trick. I'll test it for sure.

Thank you!

4

And I can do you one better!

If you also put a semaphore at the top of the new macro, you can ensure that each call to that macro won't overlap with a different call. So if I have three different threads calling my routine called "Speak Text Asynchronously" then they will not all speak at the same time. Usually that's desirable.

5

I always wondered what those semaphore actions were for. Thanks for the tip :+1:

6

Glad to help. That's one of the best uses of the semaphore action. In your case, I didn't actually test how the highlight target action will work when run multiple times simultaneously. Depending on how it's implemented, it may not support multiple occurrences running at the same time. But I'll bet if it works asynchronously, you could run 100 highlight targets at the same time and it would look absolutely amazing.

7

I'd also like to suggest for a future update that the "highlight target" action allows for choosing different colors. And if possible a couple/few more shapes. Also perhaps an opacity setting. Drop shadow would be nice too!

8

I would love that too! In fact I think I would love more choices than oval and rectangle. At least it gives a timer value. Maybe if we can think of a few ways to enhance this action, our ideas might be adopted. I'd say we have a 30% chance of influencing the Architect.