Configure your browser with a custom Beeminder search engine

[dreev]

Idea from @NickWolf in the Discord:

configuring my browser with a custom beeminder search engine is a genius move.

b = beeminder

then b takes you to your beeminder homepage
b anki takes you to your goal named anki
and b new takes you to the goal creation page.

This reminds me of the Raycast extension of Beeminder, which is also pretty brilliant (I have it set up, but am not yet in the habit of actually using it):

Now you can manage your goals using Raycast

I’m a huge fan of Raycast and created an extension to manage my Beeminder goals, decided to make it open-source and share it with the community! The extension allows you to view your goals and when they’ll derail. You can also add data points directly from the extension. [beeminder-2] [beeminder-3] If you have any feedback or feature requests, feel free to post them here!

[lennartknigge]

also have setup the raycast extension. I think it is the best way at the moment to get quick access to all of your goals and add data to multiple goals very quickly in your routine. the thing with the custom search engine or other alternatives:

1. use snippet extension/text replacement so everytime you type “qbee,banki”(q because not many words are with q) or something that is not usual it gets replaced by the link to the goal or page you’d like
2. use some keyboard shortcut customization tool. I use a karabiner element setup on mac with hyperkey so that it can take me to my beeminder dashboard or the individual goals if I like from everywhere.

is that I would maybe use it to look at the deep stats or setting of the goals but I would never use it in my routine because the raycast extension just lets you add data to every goal so quickly while you are quickly back at your dashboard. Maybe just adding the possibility to add data on your dashboard would make things just easier. thus I can just add data very quickly by just opening my dashboard and still having the possibility to access the deep statistics/settings of each goal.
to sum up, I think the raycast extension is still the best thing for every day usage and options like a custom search function are great if you want to edit/see data/statistics of a specific goal you have in mind very quickly but I assume that in the early stage of setting up a goal where you change the statistics etc. the most you haven’t really got used to the name(to search in a custom search engine) and will just open the dashboard.
maybe a way would be to introduce a search function on the beeminder website so you can quickly access all your goals. I believe that would make it much easier for the user in the early phase of setting up their goals with a quicker and easier navigation, where they are still not sure about some goals and need to look up setting etc…