Adam @ Bitscribe

Catapult is a side project I’ve been working on this past few weekends, with the goal of bringing a command-line style interface to web navigation.

Think about how one normally navigates to the web apps one uses every day. If I want to compose a new post on my blog, for example, I go to the blog homepage (by entering in the complete url, maybe utilizing my browser’s autocompletion), then grab my mouse and click on the admin link, then click on the write link, then switch back to the keyboard to start typing. This is no big deal for just one app, but think of all the actions like this we perform every day. Web searches, Gmail, Yahoo yellow pages, Google Maps, Craigslist, eBay, your bank’s website, and so on. Typically we do all this with bookmarks, urls typed in from memory, and lots of clicking on navigation links. It’s not very efficient.

Catapult lets you create commands that act as shortcuts, in some cases dynamic ones. So for example a Google search would be “g [search terms]”. I can launch Gmail with “gmail”, but I can also jump straight to the compose window with a recipient already entered by typing “gmail someone@somewhere.net”. Searching my inbox is just as easy: “gmail /thing to search for”.

It’s interesting to note that using the Gmail launcher has increased my productivity in an unexpected way. I often need to send an email about something, but opening my inbox and seeing some new messages that have come in distracts me from that task. By jumping straight to the compose window I don’t even get a chance to see the inbox and thus avoid unintended distraction.

Check it out, and post any feedback here; or drop me an email with your comments.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 2:45 am and is filed under UI, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.