Could we have aliases that work similar to the function key aliases but for the media keys on the keyboard? Many have a play/pause button, back button, next button and stop button, up/down volume buttons (mine has a dial you can turn but it fires a key event each each time it's moved) and a mute button.

Can $com be used to do this in the meantime? I have often wondered about using them myself.

this would be hard to implement correctly I think.

I know logitech has software for the keyboard which makes it act globally. for instance at a certain version of the driver, if you would push the play button it would open your default music player (in my case that was winamp).

you need to have the drivers support your application else another app (usually the default one) will 'steal' your keypresses...

Windows has a RegisterGlobalHotkey() api that can capture keypresses without 'stealing them' (i.e. other apps still receive them), it just means that even if mIRC is active windows media player would use the keypress if it's open. I think this is how most applications capture global keypresses.

Certain keyboards automatically opening a certain media player when you hit the key isn't a good reason not to include this imo.

One thing I've noticed however is that the up/down volume control has the same ascii number as ( and ), so I'm not sure how you tell them apart.

IAmParadox: nope, mIRC doesn't support COM events. A dll could work though.

can't you just catch key number instead of ascii number?

I think the key number will be the same.