GTD with Google Chrome and AutoHotKey
This is a Lounge post aside from the usual investment offerings that i usually come up with. I feel that it really has added benefits when Google launch their web browser this week called Google Chrome.
An added benefit of it is the tight integration of Google Gears into it.This i would think will translate to better performance when working with some Web 2.0 application such as Gmail, Remember The Milk etc.
Specifically, Google Chrome enables you to launch a streamline web application such as Remember The Milk or Zoho Docs by itself.You can compare the vast differences in speed when you launch a Google Chrome instance vs a Mozilla Firefox 3 instance.
The problem is that for these application, you would require only one copy of it to run and reference it time and time again. What do i think is the best way to do this? Enter AutoHotKey.
Here i will go through an example of how i will use Chrome and AutoHotKey to bring up a list of To-Dos on Remember The Milk.
1) Download Google Chrome. First if you have not download Google Chrome, you can download the web browser over here.
2) Download AutoHotKey. Download the smashing launcher/shortcut software that is AutoHotKey over here. You can use the quick start tutorial provided to learn about the number of shortcut and conveniences you can achieve with AutoHotKey here.
3) Save Remember The Milk iGoogle Homepage as a Gears application. Remember the milk have a comprehensive web front but for reviewing your list time and again, it might not be a good idea to view every thing.
Here we make use of a streamline version of Remmeber the Milk Task List made for iGoogle. Launch this link here in your Google Chrome browser.
We will now make it into a gears application. Click the Control on Current Page icon on the top right hand corner shown in the diagram. Then select Create Application Shortcuts...
Select Start Menu (I prefer to have my desktop very clean) Then click OK. You should end up with a streamline Chrome Remember the Milk instance like the one below.
4) Get launch path of your RTM Gears instance. Go to your Start Menu, Find your Remember the Milk Gears instance and right click on it. go to Properties. Note the Target path. We will insert it later.
5) Create scriptlet to launch and activate this RTM Chrome instance. Now we need to create the AutoHotKey Scriptlet to launch and activate this instance. Right click on your AutoHotKey icon in system tray and select Edit this script. Insert the following scriptlet at the bottom of the script file:
^+r::
IfWinExist,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
{
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
WinActivate
}
else
{
Run,[insert the target path in Step 4 here]
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
WinActivate
}
return
Replace “[insert the target path in Step 4 here]” with the target path you noted in Step 4. Save the config file. go to the system tray, right-click on the AutoHotKey icon and select Reload This Script.
6) You are done! What happens now is that we have assigned to launch this Gears RTM instance using [Ctrl + Shift + R] key. If one instance is open up, it will go to that instance instead of launching a new instance. You can change the shortcut key to one you prefer. For info, ^ represents Ctrl, + represents Shift and # represents Windows Key. So ^+r will mean Ctrl Shift r.
You can launch alot of things that you frequently use. I can list a few here:
- Remember the milk
- Zoho Docs
- Gmail
- Google Docs
- Google Calendar
Hope this has been useful.
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