Shutter Lite

Using your computer as your main tool for work might require repetitive task handling which is both time-consuming and frustrating. However, there are various applications out there specially designed to offer a little more comfort and have these processes automated. Shutter is one of them and comes packed with a friendly interface and an abundance of features.

It only takes several seconds to go through the setup process and once it is finished you can choose to launch the application. You are greeted by an interface designed a little different than what you would expect from a common scheduling application.

The workspace is divided into two main parts, one dedicated to events, while the other refers to actions. If you're unsure about the configuration of tasks, you can always bring up the cleverly structured online help manual and it surely gets you out of sticky situations.

One of the first steps is to create an event. A new window appears with all available choices, amongst which you find countdown, on time, Winamp stops, CPU usage, battery low and even an option for when the lid closes or opens.

Regardless of your choice, several criteria become available to specify as trigger conditions. For example, you can input the name of a window and an action to start when it opens or closes, as well as a time for the application to check for the window's status.

The next step has you browsing through a large list of actions. Amongst all of your computer's power options, you can also choose to set an alarm, message, play sound, open file, kill process, run a program and a lot more. Same as for events, each comes with dedicated settings.

A great advantage is that you can create a single event that can trigger multiple actions. The application lets you select several logic parameters that specify the order action is taken. You can choose ALL, AND, OR, as well as 1BY1, which are pretty self-explanatory.

Depending on circumstances, the list of actions and events can be saved to a custom profile and loaded each time the specific case needs to run. What's more, your actions can be kept safe with the help of a password you set.

As a conclusion, Shutter is a professional application designed in such a friendly manner that anyone can use it with little effort put into understanding its functionality. Once you get the hang of it, events and actions can be created so that nearly all repetitive tasks can be automatically handled by the application so you can attend to more important matters.