I've seen a bunch of generalized keyboard macro packages over the years. Direct
Access does a nice job of putting shortcuts and commands at your fingertips while
you're typing, but still staying out of the way when you don't want a macro to expand.
For me, at least, it strikes the right balance between being unobtrusive and being
useful, and that's enough that I'll most likely leave it running on my machine.
Here's how it works. You define "actions" within the direct access interface. An
action can be opening a Web site, launching an application, composing a new e-mail
message, or typing out a chunk of text. Each action gets assigned a set of keystrokes
as a command - for example, I've got se aliased to the SlickEdit text editor that
I use. Now, any time I type se in any application a little tooltip pops up showing
the SlickEdit icon and the Direct Access confirmation key (F1 by default, though
you can change this). If I hit the confirmation key, Direct Access erases the command
keystrokes and launches SlickEdit. If I type anything else - say, "se" turns into
"serious" - the tooltip just vanishes without being more than a momentary flash
on screen.
There are some other nice touches here besides the visual confirmation, which really
makes a difference for me. The Hub, a large semi-transparent icon that floats in
the lower right corner of your screen, acts as a drag and drop interface to Direct
Access. Drag some text or a URL or shortcut to it, and Direct Access builds you
a new action. You can also group actions together, and assign shortcuts to open
the entire group as a floating menu. You can also export a batch of your actions
as an "action pack" and easily import action packs from others, which shows some
promise on the community front. There are still a few rough edges too, as you'd
expect in a 1.0 product - one nuisance is that the shortcut key choice is limited
to function keys or key combinations (such as Ctrl+Enter or Alt+\); I'd prefer to have some other choices, such as \
or even PgDn, available because they'd be easier for my lazy fingers to type without reaching.
If you'd like to try it for yourself, you can download a 30-day trial from the Nagarsoft
site.