Sunday, August 11, 2002

Jon Udell on ActiveWords ActiveWords and namespace completion. I've been meaning to try ActiveWords, so when its inventor and evangelizer Buzz Bruggeman wrote to me about it recently, I took the plunge. ActiveWords is built around a universal keyboard filter for Windows. You use it to build up a vocabulary of words or phrases. When you type these in any input context (your word processor, a web form, the command line, an email address field, or even in no context at all -- i.e., when no foreground app expects input), and then hit the action key, something useful happens. The useful thing can be text substitution, which makes ActiveWords a universal alternative to various app-specific shortcut features. The useful thing might also be launching an app, or navigating to a folder, document, or URL. These capabilities make ActiveWords a system-wide shortcut-enabled CLI (command-line interface) that augments the Windows GUI (graphical user interface) and, for some users, could even replace much of it. The software can optionally watch for frequent launch or navigation events and prompt you to assign words to them. ... [Jon's Radio] Good overview of ActiveWords by Jon and helpful contextualizing of same. I've been using ActiveWords for a while here and gradually figuring out how to get the most benefit from it. Buzz has offered to help me get better several times, but I've been too busy with other things. 2:55:56 PM

© Copyright 2002 Jim McGee.