Ever since I started really getting into computers, I've been really interested in finding the quickest way to do just about anything. Unless you're editing photos or browsing maps, the fastest way to do something is using keyboard shortcuts.
I find this to be especially true with browsing the internet. If I want to select the address bar and type "www.gmail.com" 100 times a day, and I spend 5 seconds doing this task, that's almost 10 minutes I lose a day. In a year, that's ~ 3600 minutes, or 60 hours, which is about 2 and a half days that I lose of my life just by clicking on the address bar!
In addition, using a touch pad or trackpad on a laptop to point and click is very unhealthy, so the more I can use the keyboard, and the less keystrokes it takes for me to do something, the better.
At work, we have a really cool system where you can go to your email simply by opening a browser and typing "m". Calendar is "c", and so on. Wouldn't it be great to have something like this at home? Well, firefox has it, and it's called "bookmark keywords".
Bookmark keywords are just keyboard shortcuts to your bookmarks. So, instead of going to your bookmarks and clicking on them, you just type the keyboard shortcut for that bookmark in your browser, and hit enter.
For example, if I wanted to make http://mail.google.com map to "m", I would go to http://mail.google.com, then bookmark the page. Then, I would open Bookmark manager (Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks...), right click on the Gmail bookmark, go to Properties, and in the keyword box type the letter "m". Then, any time I typed "m in the browser, I'd go straight to my email!
This site has more suggestions for how you can use keywords in awesome ways.
I've always been amused by how the smallest things in user interface design make the biggest difference. This is a perfect example of a small feature that means the world to me. Or almost, anyway.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
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