Sep
7
2009
I use OmniFocus a lot, and have recently tweaked some more AppleScripts to make my workflow even more smooth. I can add any mail to OmniFocus for replies, add confirmation of orders from mail to OmniFocus which will automatically go into my project-shoebox for orders, with a ‘waiting for’ context and a due date set to 1 week into the future, unless I’ve changed or added MailTags with a project, a keyword and a due date. In that case it’ll take the project, the first keyword and the due date and use them to set up the OmniFocus task. I have a few more scripts:
- in OmniWeb I can take and add a URL for later reading, it’ll go into my inbox by default
- in OmniWeb I can take and add a URL to my ‘wish-list’ project (with a start date for at 2 weeks in the future)
- in OmniFocus I have scripts to easily change the context or the project of selected tasks
- in Mail I can press a key and have the selected e-mail(s) sent to OmniFocus with a ‘Respond to: ‘ before the subject line, sorting into either a default project or the one specified in MailTags, with the context set to ‘mail’ and the message URL in the note-field
- in OmniFocus I can select such a task, press a key to run a script that will open the message and immediately create a reply (I have a separate one for just opening, in case I have to read it thoroughly first)
All these scripts make the integration between all these programs very easy. That and FastScripts.
I found useful scripts over at Curtis Clifton’s site. His scripts use Growl notification so if you have Growl installed you get a small notification.
I had some trouble putting my own scripts together, so I decided to paste the info here, just in case I need it later on, or someone else runs into similar issues. I found it quite hard to figure out how to add a task to an existing project or to move it from inbox / other project. In the end, it only took a few lines.
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Apr
4
2009
I wanted an easy way to shorten my URLs through one of the URL-shorteners out there. I liked bit.ly, because it’s nice and short, has an easy to navigate web-interface (without a mouse) and I can use its magic with my terminal (cURL).
I also very much like TextExpander and after googling a bit, I ofcourse found an Applescript for TextExpander and Bit.ly. That link also shows how to set it up in TextExpander, very handy!
The script does not however use your actual bit.ly account so you can keep track of the URLs you shorten. I tweaked it and made adjustments and it took hours and ofcourse, then I find this which is almost exactly what I had, except with URL-encoding (yummy).
The only problem with that one was that I couldn’t get it to have the URLs show up in my recent history. The ‘history=1’ didn’t seem to work.
I tweaked some more and came up with something that completely does what I want. I use OmniWeb so I replaced the
set the PageURL to (the clipboard as string)
with
tell application "OmniWeb"
set PageURL to address of active tab of browser 1
end tell
If you use safari, use
tell application "Safari"
set PageURL to URL of front document
end tell
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Mar
17
2009
After several days of OmniWeb use I remember why I so happily used it before. It zooms through pages and (yes, get this!) I can actually watch (YouTube) movies again. For months every time someone sent me a link to a YouTube or other movie I’d either have to say ‘Sorry, can’t watch that’ or forward the link, I’m almost afraid to say, to my iPhone so I could watch it there.
Yes, you got that right, I could watch internet-movies on my iPhone but not on my laptop. Yes, I have an old laptop, but I love it.
With OmniWeb I can actually watch most of them (though a bit staggering sometimes) because the browser itself doesn’t eat up too many resources (looking at you again Firefox! this hate will soon pass but I will indulge in it a bit). So far I have not once had to close my browser or other programs to reclaim memory / cpu. Closing a few tabs does the trick. Now, I may have to do this every once in a while, but having to do it every two hours (you know who I’m talking about) gets really really annoying.
Aaah, the small pleasures in life… YouTube movies…
Mar
13
2009
Once again I got frustrated with Firefox and Safari for numerous reasons. I went over to the OmniGroup site to check out OmniWeb cause I really liked using its demo. I wanted to see what price they charged and see if I would want to part with that (next month) to solve my frustrations with The Other Browsers.
And they made it free. I suck for only finding out now, three weeks after they made it free, but at least it means I can have my lovely browser that supports applescript and Services (looking at you, Firefox!), doesn’t take ages to load a page (again, looking at you, Firefox!) and supports non-mouse browsing (Firefox! no wait, that’s actually Safari….).
Very happy :D