Work Smarter Not Harder With This Free Tool
I am all for automating tasks as much as possible. In the past I had written about Roboform which is a fantastic program to save login and password information. I must use that program 10 times a day. There is another program which I have quickly grown to love. I thought I would share it with you and I think you'll like the price. It is free.
Clickin' And Dragin'
The program I am talking about is called "StrokeIt" which you can download for free here. This program is so straight forward and basic that you'll quickly see the value of it. It lets you execute common computer commands very quickly with a simple mouse movement. Here's how it works.
Using StrokeIt
Once you install StrokeIt, it runs quietly in the background. It sits down in your task tray at the bottom of your screen:
It is activated by clicking and holding down the RIGHT mouse button and then drawing on the screen a line or letter. For anyone who has a palmpilot it is very much like the palmpilot "graffiti" writing. For example say you want to close a browser window when you are done with it. Simply click and drag (with the right mouse button) and draw the letter "C" on the screen. (C = close)
Once you draw that letter C, the browser window will close for you.
Here are some of the other common browser commands I use with StrokeIt:
Back - to go back a screen, I draw a horizontal line from right to left Find - to find particular text in a browser, I draw the letter "F" and the find dialog box comes up Minimize window - draw a diagonal line from upper right to lower left There are dozens more for a variety of programs.
Learn The Strokes
As with the palmpilot graffiti, the screen drawing recognition has a few things to learn about it. Because the strokes are created in one movement, certain letters like the letter "K" require a one stroke way of drawing them.
The StrokeIt site gives you a listing of how to create all of the different strokes.You can see the Preconfigured strokes by clicking here. They are easy to learn. I got them down in under a minute but that may be partly because I am used to using a palmpilot.
Preconfigured Actions
StrokeIt comes with many preconfigured actions for various programs.
By clicking on a particular program, you can see what commands have already been programmed. It tells you what you need to draw on the screen to activate the command and it even tells you the keyboard short cut equivalent for that command. If there is not a preconfigured command, you can program your own.
What?!? No Right Click Menu
Don't worry. You can still use the right click context menu when you need to. Simply hold the "ctrl" key down when right clicking. Or if you right click without moving the mouse, the menu will come up also.
Bottom Line You may want to give this program a try. Its free and once you get used to it, pretty handy. If you enjoy the program enough, you can make a donation to the author to help encourage future projects from him.
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