Sometimes the obvious isn’t very obvious. Following thousands of blogs means I’m often leaving comments. Even responding to comments on my own blog requires the same process as readers use. It’s standard to require name, email, and optionally site URL, when commenting so I set up ActiveWords for each of those. Now I just type a few ActiveWords (rcf, @b, rbu) to enter all the details.
It was only today that I realised nearly all blogs request these details in the same order. It took only a few seconds to create this simple ActiveWords script;
<RCF><TAB><WORD:@b><TAB><RBU><TAB>
- Like the ActiveWord below @b has “Confirmation Flag” ticked. This means it requires confirmation with the ActiveWords Key to activate. This type of ActiveWord is called in scripts with <WORD:#> format rather than the normal <#>.
- You could just enter the name etc directly in the script but calling ActiveWords means if something changes, say my blog email, editing one ActiveWord updates it everywhere it’s nested.
Now it’s just “rbc” to leave a comment. That’s 59 potentially error ridden keystrokes without ActiveWords reduced to 3 and no chance for a mistake. Now it’s done it seems so obvious. So why, I wonder, did it take so long to think of?
Screenshot created with SnagIt 8, Animated Gif with Camtasia 4, Magic with ActiveWords
